Each year in the United States, 600,000 to 800,000 heart stents are placed to restore blood flow through coronary arteries. Patients are then given medication to keep blood clots from forming near the surgical site. Such clots can be deadly, causing heart attack and stroke.

But, which antiplatelet medication is best? The answer may lie in your genes. “The current standard of care after angioplasty is to prescribe clopidogrel for one year, regardless of a person’s individual genotype, even though we have known for several years that variation in the CYP2C19 gene may diminish the benefit from the drug,” says Naveen Pereira, M.D., a Mayo Clinic cardiologist and principal investigator.

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Tags: antiplatelet, antiplatelet medication, clopidogrel, dna test, DNA Testing, gene sequencing, genome science, genomic medicine, genomics, heart, heart attack, Heart Health, individualized medicine, mayo clinic, Naveen Pereira, personal genomics, personalized medicine, predictive medicine, Uncategorized