The contribution of clinical and pathological predisposing factors to severe gastro-duodenal lesions in patients with long-term low-dose aspirin and proton pump inhibitor therapy.

BACKGROUND: Preventive strategies developed to avoid the complications of antiplatelet therapies recommend the evaluation of risk factors for gastrointestinal events and indicated gastroprotective strategies.

AIM: We aimed to assess the impact of predisposing factors - histological findings, concomitant drug consumption, comorbidities, symptoms, social habits, Helicobacter pylori infection - on severe gastro-duodenal lesions in patients with low-dose aspirin and concomitant protective therapy with proton pump inhibitors (PPI).

METHOD: We enrolled 237 patients with LDA and PPI therapy, referred for upper digestive endoscopy, divided into two groups according to the severity of their endoscopic lesions (172 patients with no or mild endoscopic lesions and 65 patients with severe endoscopic lesions).

RESULTS: In the univariate logistic regression model, the factors associated with severe gastro-duodenal lesions were gender (OR=1.87, 95% CI: 1.04-3.41), anticoagulants (OR=2.40, 95% CI: 1.26-4.53), gastric atrophy and/or intestinal metaplasia (OR=1.85, 95% CI: 1.04-3.32), congestive heart failure (OR=2.59, 95% CI: 1.16-6.62), anaemia (OR=3.01, 95% CI: 1.67-5.47) and smoking (OR=4.29, 95% CI: 1.57-12.32). In the final model, anticoagulants (p=0.041<0.05) and anaemia (p=0.019<0.05) were risk factors for severe lesions via multivariate regression analysis, while for active/inactive chronic gastritis and smoking a positive dependency with a tendency towards statistical significance (p<0.10) was noticed for severe gastric lesions.

CONCLUSIONS: In patients treated with low-dose aspirin and gastroprotective therapy with proton pump inhibitors we have enough evidence to consider co-treatment with anticoagulants and anaemia important predictors for severe endoscopic lesions, while other factors such as inflammation in gastric biopsies, congestive heart failure, co-treatment with clopidogrel and smoking tended to have a positive influence on risk for severe gastro-duodenal lesions.