Two new studies call into question the advantage of using the blood pressure medicine telmisartan and the blood thinner dipyridamole for preventing the recurrence of a stroke. Telmisartan showed no benefits at all.
Patients who received telmisartan were no less likely to have another stroke than those taking a placebo. At the same time, doctors discovered that aspirin combined with the anti-platelet drug dipyridamole worked no better than the standard anti-clotting treatment clopidogrel.
Both papers are part of the results of the "Profess" study, which included more than 20,000 patients from 695 medical centers in 35 countries.