BACKGROUND:The role of long-term beta-blocker therapy after a myocardial infarction in patients without left ventricular systolic dysfunction or heart failure is unclear in the era of contemporary coronary-artery reperfusion and secondary prevention interventions. METHODS:We conducted an open-label, randomized, noninferiority trial at 25 centers in South Korea. Patients whose condition remained stable after a myocardial infarction, who had a left ventricular ejection fraction of at least 40% and no heart failure, and who had received beta-blocker therapy for at least 1 year after the myocardial infarction were randomly assigned in a 1:1 ratio to discontinue or to continue beta-blocker therapy. The primary end point was a composite of death from any cause, recurrent myocardial infarction, or hospitalization for heart failure. The prespecified noninferiority margin was an upper limit of the 95% confidence interval for the hazard ratio of 1.4. RESULTS:A total of 2540 patients underwent randomization; 1246 were assigned to beta-blocker discontinuation and 1294 to beta-blocker continuation. The mean age of the patients was 63.2 years, and 12.8% were women. At a median follow-up of 3.1 years (interquartile range, 2.5 to 3.5), a primary end-point event had occurred in 58 patients (4-year Kaplan-Meier estimate, 7.2%) in the discontinuation group and in 74 patients (4-year Kaplan-Meier estimate, 9.0%) in the continuation group (hazard ratio, 0.80; 95% confidence interval, 0.57 to 1.13; P = 0.001 for noninferiority). The incidence of serious adverse events was similar in the two groups. CONCLUSIONS:Among patients who received beta-blocker therapy beyond the first year after a myocardial infarction, discontinuation of beta-blocker therapy was noninferior to continuation with respect to a composite of death from any cause, recurrent myocardial infarction, or hospitalization for heart failure. (Funded by Patient-Centered Clinical Research Coordinating Center in the Ministry of Health and Welfare, South Korea; SMART-DECISION ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT04769362.).
BACKGROUND:The optimal long-term strategy for preventing post-gastrectomy gallstone formation in gastric cancer (GC) remains unclear. This study evaluated the sustained efficacy of a 12-month course of ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) after gastrectomy for GC. METHODS:We conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial at 13 institutions in the Republic of Korea. Patients who underwent total, distal, or proximal gastrectomy for GC were randomized 1:1:1 to receive either 300 mg UDCA, 600 mg UDCA, or placebo daily for 12 months. The primary outcome was the incidence of gallstone formation at least 5 years post-gastrectomy. Secondary outcomes were biliary pain, gallstone complications, and cholecystectomy. RESULTS:A total of 431 participants (300 mg UDCA: n = 141; 600 mg UDCA: n = 150; placebo: n = 140) were analyzed. At 80 months post-gastrectomy, gallstone formation occurred in 10.00% of the 300 mg group, 12.83% of the 600 mg group, and 26.21% of the placebo group. UDCA significantly reduced the hazard of gallstone formation compared to placebo (hazard ratio: 0.33, 95% CI 0.18-0.63, P = 0.0014 for 300 mg; 0.43, 95% CI 0.25-0.75, P = 0.0064 for 600 mg). There were no significant differences among groups in the incidence of biliary pain, gallstone complications, or cholecystectomy. CONCLUSION:Twelve months of UDCA administration was associated with sustained reduction in gallstone formation for up to 80 months after gastrectomy in GC patients.
Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is uncommon in Asia, and longitudinal genomic data from Asian cohorts are limited. We conducted serial whole-exome sequencing (WES) in a multicenter Korean cohort of newly diagnosed, elderly CLL treated with chlorambucil-obinutuzumab to evaluate mutational heterogeneity and clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP) during treatment and follow-up. Tumor-only variants were filtered, restricted to nonsynonymous or loss-of-function coding/splice-site mutations, and summarized as a binary patient-by-gene matrix for principal component analysis (PCA), trajectory analysis, and k-means clustering. CHIP was defined as ≥1 qualifying mutation in a prespecified CHIP gene set. Baseline PCA was more compact in patients with complete response at end of treatment, whereas partial response or progressive disease cases were more dispersed. PCA trajectories were compact and directionally consistent in complete responders, more dispersed in partial responders, and highly heterogeneous without a dominant direction in progressive disease. Clustering identified dispersed and compact clusters, and CHIP-associated mutations were enriched in the dispersed cluster (55.6% vs. 8.3%, Fisher's exact p = 0.0086). In paired samples collected 3-5 months after end of treatment, CHIP status changed in some patients. Serial WES may provide complementary information to treatment response, although these observations require confirmation in larger cohorts.
