You are here

  • Home
  • Archive
  • Volume 6, Issue 9
  • Early real-world evidence of persistence on oral anticoagulants for stroke prevention in non-valvular atrial fibrillation: a cohort study in UK primary care

Article Text

Article menu

Download PDFPDF

XML
Cardiovascular medicine
Research
Early real-world evidence of persistence on oral anticoagulants for stroke prevention in non-valvular atrial fibrillation: a cohort study in UK primary care
  1. Michelle E Johnson1,
  2. Cinira Lefèvre2,
  3. Shuk-Li Collings1,
  4. David Evans2,
  5. Sebastian Kloss3,
  6. Essra Ridha4,
  7. Andrew Maguire1
  1. 1OXON Epidemiology, London, UK
  2. 2Department of Worldwide Health Economics & Outcomes Research, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Paris, France
  3. 3Pfizer, Berlin, Germany
  4. 4Medical Department UK, Bristol-Myers Squibb, London, UK
  1. Correspondence to Michelle E Johnson; michelle.johnson{at}oxonepi.com

Abstract

Objectives To examine the characteristics and persistence in patients newly initiated with oral anticoagulants (OACs) for stroke prevention in non-valvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF).

Design Cohort study in Clinical Practice Research Datalink.

Setting UK primary care.

Participants 15 242 patients with NVAF newly prescribed apixaban, rivaroxaban, dabigatran or vitamin K antagonists (VKAs) between 1 December 2012 and 31 October 2014. 13 089 patients were OAC naïve.

Outcome measures Patient characteristics and risk of non-persistence compared to apixaban using Cox regression models over the entire follow-up and using a time-partitioned approach to handle non-proportional hazards.

Results Among the OAC naïve patients, VKAs were most common (78.1%, n=10 218), followed by rivaroxaban (12.1%, n=1589), dabigatran (5.7%, n=741) and apixaban (4.1%, n=541). High baseline stroke risk (CHA2DS2VASc ≥2) ranged from 80.2% (dabigatran) to 88.4% (apixaban and rivaroxaban). History of stroke and bleeding was the highest among apixaban (23.7% and 31.6%) and lowest among VKA patients (15.9% and 27.5%). Across the entire follow-up period, adjusting for differences in characteristics, there was no evidence of a difference in non-persistence between VKA and apixaban (HR 0.92 (95% CI 0.68 to 1.23)). Non-persistence was higher with dabigatran (HR 1.67 (1.20 to 2.32)) and rivaroxaban (HR 1.41 (1.02 to 1.93)) than apixaban. Using the partitioned approach, non-persistence was lower with VKA (HR 0.33 (0.22 to 0.48)), and higher with dabigatran (HR 1.65 (1.08 to 2.52)) compared to apixaban in the first 2 months of follow-up. After 2 months, non-persistence was higher with VKA (HR 1.70 (1.08 to 2.66)) and dabigatran (HR 2.10 (1.30 to 3.41)). Pooling OAC naïve and experienced patients, non-persistence was also higher with rivaroxaban compared to apixaban after 2 months of follow-up (HR 1.69 (1.19 to 2.39)).

Conclusions Observed differential prescribing of OACs can result in channelling bias in comparative effectiveness research. Persistence patterns changed over follow-up time, but there are indications of improved persistence rates with apixaban over other OACs in the UK. A larger study with longer follow-up is needed to corroborate findings. This study is registered on ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT02488421).

  • atrial fibrillation
  • oral anticoagulation
  • discontinuation patterns

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2016-011471

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text