Coagulation factors and recurrence of ischemic and bleeding adverse events in patients with acute coronary syndromes.

In the last years, management and prognosis of patients with acute coronary syndromes (ACS) are significantly improved. Nowadays antithrombotic (antiplatelet plus anticoagulant drugs) therapy represents the main treatment of ACS patients. Anticoagulant drugs are particularly helpful in the acute phase of ACS, whereas in the chronic phase are maintained only in selected cases. Many studies demonstrate that exists a significant variability in the coagulation factor levels between patients affected by ACS. This variation on coagulation factors levels is due to environmental (smoking, inflammation, sex, oral contraceptive, triglycerides, diabetes mellitus) and genetic determinants. Particularly several gene polymorphisms have been selected and clearly associated with significant variations in the coagulation factors values. The heightened levels of tissue factor, factor VII and fibrinogen are related with a "hypercoagulable status" and with a higher occurrence of ischemic complications after ACS and/or PCI. On the contrary, less data are available regarding the relationship between coagulation factors levels (or their gene polymorphisms) and bleeding complications. Recently, new anticoagulant drugs have been developed. They show less side effects and a better tolerability and, probably, their selected use in patients with a "hypercoagulable status" may improve the clinical outcome after ACS. In this review we analyze the current available data and we discuss how this finding may be useful for planning future studies to optimize the treatment of ACS patients.