UF Health Neurosurgeon Awarded $38 Million Grant To Lead National Stroke Prevention Trial
The National Institutes of Health awarded a $38 million, five-year grant to Brian Hoh, M.D., M.B.A., the University of Florida’s chair of neurosurgery, to test two new prospective treatments for symptomatic intracranial arterial stenosis, a leading cause of ischemic stroke worldwide.
Intracranial arterial stenosis is a severe narrowing of an artery in the brain, and this condition accounts for 8-10% of all strokes in the U.S., about 80,000 per year. More than 20% of patients with this type of stenosis who receive current treatment still experience stroke, intracerebral hemorrhage or vascular death within a year. Ischemic strokes, the most common type of stroke, result when a vessel supplying blood to the brain is blocked by a clot.
“Clearly there is a need for better treatment,” said Hoh, who will lead the large national phase 3 clinical trial with co-principal investigator Marc Chimowitz, MBChB, a professor of neurology at the Medical University of South Carolina.
The double-blinded, randomized clinical trial across 115 U.S. sites will include 1,683 participants, who each will be placed into one of three different medical treatment paths for comparison. One group will receive ticagrelor, also known as Brilinta, plus aspirin; the second group will receive rivaroxaban, also known as Xarelto, plus aspirin; and the third group will receive the current treatment of clopidogrel, also known as Plavix, plus aspirin.
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