Conditions: Atherothrombosis
Keywords: Platelet Transcriptome Coronary Artery Disease Myocardial Ischemia Coronary Disease Heart Diseases Cardiovascular Diseases Arteriosclerosis Arterial Occlusive Diseases Vascular Diseases Aspirin
Allocation: NA | Intervention model: SINGLE_GROUP
Enrollment: 33
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
This clinical trial is examining the effect of 4-week aspirin therapy on platelet transcriptome in persons at high-risk for myocardial infarction or stroke due to family history of early-onset coronary artery disease.

Detailed description:
Platelet aggregation can initiate thrombosis on ulcerated arterial plaques resulting in acute coronary syndrome (ACS). There is large variation in platelet aggregation between individuals. As the genetic message to the cell machinery is conveyed through its transcriptome, we hypothesize that much of the variability in platelet function can be explained by transcriptome changes including differences in gene or isoform expression, altered splicing events, or allele-specific expression. Moreover, aspirin modifies gene expression in several cells, but whether it also affects platelet transcriptome has not yet been studied. Our goal is to characterize the platelet transcriptome and identify genes that are up- or down-regulated after 4-week aspirin therapy. A major strength of our study is that it enrolls individuals from European Americans and African Americans and thus will have the ability to study similarities and differences between the two. The study will produce innovative comparative genomic/platelet phenotype data and will provide a potential pharmacogenomic and diagnostic template for the future discovery of novel antiplatelet regimens to prevent thrombosis-related cardiovascular disease events.

Arms:
arm 1: Participants treated with aspirin - there is no control group. Participant's baseline will act as their control.

Interventions: intervention 1: Aspirin
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: 81 mg daily for 4 weeks

Protocol document: