The primary safety endpoint was the first occur- rence of any major bleeding event. The randomized treat- ment was scheduled to continue for 12 months; however, patients were allowed to leave the trial at 6 to 9 months if the event-driven study achieved its targeted number of primary events. Overall, the median duration of study drug administration was 277 days. Using a double-blind, double-dummy design, ticagrelor (180-mg loading dose followed by 90 mg twice daily) was compared with clopidogrel (300- to 600-mg loading dose followed by 75 mg daily).9 At 24 hours after randomization, 79% of patients treated with clopidogrel received at least 300 mg, and nearly 20% received at least 600 mg. Overall, 64.3% of patients underwent PCI during the index hospitalization and 60.6% had stent implantation. Median times from the start of hospitalization to initiation of study treatment were 4.9 and 5.3 hours for ticagrelor and clopidogrel, respectively. At 12 months, ticagrelor was associated with a 1.9% absolute reduction and 16% relative reduction in the primary composite outcome compared with clopidogrel which was driven by lower rates of MI (5.8% versus 6.9%; benefits of ticagrelor appeared consistent across most subgroups studied, with no significant interaction being observed between the treatment effect and type of ACS. In focusing specifically on patients with UA/NSTEMI, ti- cagrelor was associated with a significant reduction in the primary efficacy endpoint among NSTEMI patients CI: 0.73 to 0.94) but not among UA patients (n 3112 1.22), although caution is urged against overinterpreting subgroup analyses. The benefits of ticagrelor in PLATO appeared within the first 30 days, persisted for up to 360 days, and were evident irrespective of clopidogrel pretreat- ment and whether patients had invasive or medical man- agement planned. 