Risk of recurrent stroke for Asian stroke patients treated with non-vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulant and warfarin

AIM: The aim of this study was to establish whether non-vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulants (NOACs) are superior to warfarin in preventing stroke recurrence for atrial fibrillation (AF) patients with an ischemic or hemorrhagic stroke at the baseline. METHODS: From 1 January 2009 to 31 December 2017, stroke patients with AF treated with oral anticoagulants in the National Health Insurance Research Database in Taiwan were enrolled. The study was retrospective cohort design. Outcome measures were ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke recurrence. The Cox proportional hazard model was used to obtain the hazard ratio (HR). RESULTS: In total, 39,840 stroke patients with AF treated with NOAC and 42,583 treated with warfarin were identified. NOACs were superior to warfarin in preventing all recurrent stroke [adjusted HR: 0.67, 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.63–0.71, p < 0.001]. Results for the ischemic stroke population were the same as that for all types for stroke (adjusted HR: 0.66, 95% CI, 0.62–0.70, p < 0.001). For the hemorrhagic stroke population, NOACs were equivalent to warfarin in preventing ischemic stroke (adjusted HR: 1.11, 95% CI, 0.86–0.43, p < 0.001), but NOACs were superior to warfarin in preventing hemorrhagic stroke (adjusted HR: 0.64, 95% CI, 0.55–0.74, p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: NOACs were generally superior to warfarin in terms of efficacy and safety in previous stroke patients. The robustness of our findings was verified and should add new information to current recommendations for Asian stroke patients in selecting NOACs.