This video is about the ASPIRING study. It could help you decide about taking part.
Doctor Rustam Salman is a neurologist, professor at the University of Edinburgh and the chief investigator of the study.
I'll tell you his answers to some frequently asked questions about ASPIRING.
What’s ASPIRING about?
ASPIRING is for people who have had a stroke due to bleeding in the brain, also known as brain haemorrhage. Brain haemorrhage survivors are at risk of having another stroke, heart attack, and other clotting or bleeding problems.
Doctors try to prevent these problems by lowering blood pressure. Despite that, these problems affect about one in ten brain haemorrhage survivors every year.
An international team of researchers, led by the University of Edinburgh are ASPIRING to find out if aspirin or another medicine like it called clopidogrel, prevent stroke, heart attack, and death after brain haemorrhage.
These medicines thin the blood to prevent blood clotting, but they may also increase the risk of bleeding. Overall, these medicines are used in standard medical practise because they do more good than harm for people without brain haemorrhage.
What’s known already?
Aspirin and clopidogrel were safe in the researchers’ pilot study of 537 people with brain haemorrhage in the UK called RESTART.
What’s next?
Now the researchers want to find out if adding one of these medicines to standard care is acceptably safe, and helps a wide range of brain haemorrhage survivors, compared with standard care alone.
They're doing this in a study of more than 4,000 people worldwide.
We invite you to join the ASPIRING study. You may be eligible if you have had a brain haemorrhage, and you are not taking any medicines that thin your blood.
What does ASPIRING involve?
You're given information leaflets and answers to any questions that you may have. If you want to take part, you must complete a consent form. But you don't have to take part. Either way, your medical care will be the same. Take as long as you need to decide.
A researcher at your hospital enters information about you into a secure study database. The ASPIRING database will assign you to one of two options.
Standard care or standard care with a daily aspirin or clopidogrel pill. You'd have an equal chance of getting either option. The database decides using a process called randomization. You and your doctors will know which option you are given. If ASPIRING assigns you to start aspirin or clopidogrel, your hospital team will write the first prescription. After that, your usual doctor will prescribe the medicine, and you should keep taking it until the study ends.
If ASPIRING assigns you to standard care, you should avoid aspirin and clopidogrel. You should stick to the option assigned to you until the study ends, unless you have a health problem that must change it. Continue taking your usual medicines.
When you leave hospital, a researcher will add information to the study database about medicines that you are prescribed and how you're doing.
If you join ASPIRING, doctors who care for you will be informed. ASPIRING will store information about you securely and confidentially. You can withdraw from part or all of the study at any time, but it will keep the information already collected about you.
ASPIRING will follow your progress via the doctors looking after you or your medical records for one to five years.
Is there anything else you’d like to say?
Ultimately, ASPIRING will analyse the results to find out whether one option is better than the other, which could benefit thousands of brain haemorrhage survivors around the world every year.
Thank you for considering this invitation to be part of ASPIRING. Please ask if you have any questions. If you've met the study team at your hospital, please ask them. Otherwise, contact the team coordinating ASPIRING.