Among patients with TIA or minor stroke who can be treated within 24 hours after the onset of symptoms, the combination of clopidogrel and aspirin is superior to aspirin alone for reducing the risk of stroke in the first 90 days and does not increase the risk of hemorrhage. (Funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China; CHANCE ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00979589.).

Background and Purpose-We aimed to establish the prevalence, characteristics, and outcomes of intracranial atherosclerosis (ICAS) in China by a large, prospective, multicenter study. Methods-We evaluated 2864 consecutive patients who experienced an acute cerebral ischemia <7 days after symptom onset in 22 Chinese hospitals. All patients underwent magnetic resonance angiography, with measurement of diameter of the main intracranial arteries. ICAS was defined as ≥50% diameter reduction on magnetic resonance angiography. Results-The prevalence of ICAS was 46.6% (1335 patients, including 261 patients with coexisting extracranial carotid stenosis). Patients with ICAS had more severe stroke at admission and stayed longer in hospitals compared with those without intracranial stenosis (median National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale score, 3 versus 5; median length of stay, 14 versus 16 days; both P<0.0001). After 12 months, recurrent stroke occurred in 3.27% of patients with no stenosis, in 3.82% for those with 50% to 69% stenosis, in 5.16% for those with 70% to 99% stenosis, and in 7.27% for those with total occlusion. Cox proportional hazards regression analyses showed that the degree of arterial stenosis, age, family history of stroke, history of cerebral ischemia or heart disease, complete circle of Willis, and National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale score at admission were independent predictors for recurrent stroke at 1 year. The highest rate of recurrence was observed in patients with occlusion with the presence of ≥3 additional risk factors. Conclusions-ICAS is the most common vascular lesion in patients with cerebrovascular disease in China. Recurrent stroke rate in our study was lower compared with those of previous clinical trials but remains unacceptably high in a subgroup of patients with severe stenosis. (Stroke. 2014;45:663-669.)

IMPORTANCE Data are limited regarding the association between CYP2C19 genetic variants and clinical outcomes of patients with minor stroke or transient ischemic attack treated with clopidogrel. OBJECTIVE To estimate the association between CYP2C19 genetic variants and clinical outcomes of clopidogrel-treated patients with minor stroke or transient ischemic attack. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Three CYP2C19 major alleles (*2, *3, *17) were genotyped among 2933 Chinese patients from 73 sites who were enrolled in the Clopidogrel in High-Risk Patients with Acute Nondisabling Cerebrovascular Events (CHANCE) randomized trial conducted from January 2, 2010, to March 20, 2012. INTERVENTIONS Patients with acute minor ischemic stroke or transient ischemic attack in the trial were randomized to treatment with clopidogrel combined with aspirin or to aspirin alone. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURESThe primary efficacy outcome was new stroke. The secondary efficacy outcome was a composite of new composite vascular events (ischemic stroke, hemorrhagic stroke, myocardial infarction, or vascular death). Bleeding was the safety outcome. RESULTS Among 2933 patients, 1948 (66.4%) were men, with a mean age of 62.4 years. Overall, 1207 patients (41.2%) were noncarriers and 1726 patients (58.8%) were carriers of loss-of-function alleles (*2, *3). After day 90 follow-up, clopidogrel-aspirin reduced the rate of new stroke in the noncarriers but not in the carriers of the loss-of-function alleles (P = .02 for interaction; events among noncarriers, 41 [6.7%] with clopidogrel-aspirin vs 74 [12.4%] with aspirin; hazard ratio [HR], 0.51 [95% CI, 0.35-0.75]; events among carriers, 80 [9.4%] with clopidogrel-aspirin vs 94 [10.8%] with aspirin; HR, 0.93 [95% CI, 0.69 to 1.26]). Similar results were observed for the secondary composite efficacy outcome (noncarriers: 41 [6.7%] with clopidogrel-aspirin vs 75 [12.5%] with aspirin; HR, 0.50 [95% CI, 0.34-0.74]; carriers: 80 [9.4%] with clopidogrel-aspirin vs 95 [10.9%] with aspirin; HR, 0.92 [95% CI, 0.68-1.24]; P = .02 for interaction). The effect of treatment assignment on bleeding did not vary significantly between the carriers and the noncarriers of the loss-of-function alleles (2.3% for carriers and 2.5% for noncarriers in the clopidogrel-aspirin group vs 1.4% for carriers and 1.7% for noncarriers in the aspirin only group; P = .78 for interaction). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE Among patients with minor ischemic stroke or transient ischemic attack, the use of clopidogrel plus aspirin compared with aspirin alone reduced the risk of a new stroke only in the subgroup of patients who were not carriers of the CYP2C19 loss-of-function alleles. These findings support a role of CYP2C19 genotype in the efficacy of this treatment.

The China National Stroke Registry is a large-scale nationwide registry in China. Rich data collected from this prospective registry may provide the opportunity to evaluate the quality of care for stroke patients in China.

Background and Purpose-Previous studies showed an inverse association between ideal cardiovascular health (CVH) metrics and the total risk of cardiovascular diseases and stroke. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between ideal CVH metrics and the risks of ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke, respectively. Methods-We collected information on the 7 ideal CVH metrics (including smoking status, body mass index, dietary intake, physical activity, blood pressure, total cholesterol, and fasting blood glucose) among 91 698 participants from the Kailuan study, China (72 826 men and 18 872 women between the ages of 18 and 98 years), free of myocardial infarction and stroke at baseline (2006)(2007). Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate stroke risk. Results-During the 4-year follow-up, we identified 1486 incident stroke events (1057 ischemic, 386 intracerebral hemorrhagic, and 43 subarachnoid hemorrhagic). The hazard ratios (95% confidence interval) for total stroke with adherence to 0 (reference), 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6/7 ideal CVH metrics were: 1, 0.92 (0.69-1.23), 0.69 (0.52-0.92), 0.52 (0.39-0.68), 0.38 (0.28-0.51), 0.27 (0.18-0.40), and 0.24 (0.11-0.54), respectively (P trend <0.01), after adjusting for age, sex, education, income, and hospital. Similar inverse associations were observed for both ischemic and intracerebral hemorrhagic stroke (both P trend <0.01). Conclusions-We

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T he early risk of recurrence of stroke following index transient ischemic attack (TIA) or minor ischemic stroke is very high, even in patients treated with aspirin.1-3 The Clopidogrel in High-risk patients with Acute Non-disabling Cerebrovascular Events (CHANCE) trial was designed to assess whether the combination treatment of clopidogrel and aspirin taken soon after a TIA or minor stroke could reduce the early risk of stroke. 4 The original study termination of the CHANCE trial was 90 days from randomization, and the results showed that clopidogrel-aspirin treatment decreases the 90-day risk of stroke (hazard ratio, 0.68, 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.57-0.81; P<0.001) but does not increase the risk of hemorrhage in comparison with aspirin alone. 5 Clinical Perspective on p 46Trials of clopidogrel in the acute phase after stroke or TIA were suggested to follow up beyond the cessation of clopidogrel for the concern about rebound increase in risk of recurrence of stroke. [6][7][8] We performed an additionalBackground-The Clopidogrel in High-risk patients with Acute Non-disabling Cerebrovascular Events (CHANCE) trial showed that the combined treatment of clopidogrel and aspirin decreases the 90-day risk of stroke without increasing hemorrhage in comparison with aspirin alone, but provided insufficient data to establish whether the benefit persisted over a longer period of time beyond the trial termination. We report the 1-year follow-up outcomes of this trial. Methods and Results-The trial was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial conducted at 114 centers in China. We randomly assigned 5170 patients within 24 hours after onset of minor stroke or high-risk transient ischemic attack to clopidogrel-aspirin therapy (loading dose of 300 mg of clopidogrel on day 1, followed by 75 mg of clopidogrel per day for 90 days, plus 75 mg of aspirin per day for the first 21 days) or to the aspirin-alone group (75 mg/d for 90 days). The primary outcome was stroke event (ischemic or hemorrhagic) during 1-year follow-up. Differences in outcomes between groups were assessed by using the Cox proportional hazards model. Stroke occurred in 275 (10.6%) patients in the clopidogrel-aspirin group, in comparison with 362 (14.0%) patients in the aspirin group (hazard ratio, 0.78; 95% confidence interval, 0.65-0.93; P=0.006). Moderate or severe hemorrhage occurred in 7 (0.3%) patients in the clopidogrel-aspirin group and in 9 (0.4%) patients in the aspirin group (P=0.44). 1-year visit for the CHANCE trial and patients in both treatment groups were followed up between October 2010 and July 2013 to establish whether the early benefit in the clopidogrel-aspirin group would persist over a longer period of time, or whether the clopidogrel-aspirin group would have a high rate of late strokes that would eliminate or even inverse the early efficacy gap between the 2 groups. We report the 1-year follow-up results of the CHANCE trial in this article. Conclusions-The Methods Study Design and SubjectsDetails on the rationale, design, an...

S troke remains to be the leading cause of mortality in China and was responsible for ≈1.9 million deaths in 2013. 1 Despite advances in diagnosis and treatments for stroke, adherence to evidence-based stroke care has been suboptimal based on several national studies conducted before 2009. 2,3 Since then, improving the quality of stroke care has become Background and Purpose-Stroke is a leading cause of death in China. Yet the adherence to guideline-recommended ischemic stroke performance metrics in the past decade has been previously shown to be suboptimal. Since then, several nationwide stroke quality management initiatives have been conducted in China. We sought to determine whether adherence had improved since then. However, there were no significant improvements in the rates of intravenous thrombolytic therapy and anticoagulation for atrial fibrillation. After multivariate analysis, there remained a significant 1.17-fold (95% confidence interval, 1.14-1.21) increase in the odds of delivering evidence-based performance metrics in the more recent time periods versus older data. The performance metrics with the most significantly increased odds included stroke education, dysphagia screening, smoking cessation, and antithrombotics at discharge. Conclusions-Adherence to stroke performance metrics has increased over time, but significant opportunities remain for further improvement. Continuous stroke quality improvement program should be developed as a national priority in China. Methods-Data