Clopidogrel, in combination with aspirin, is a standard treatment for patients with acute coronary syndrome and is one of the top-selling drugs in the world.1,2 However, there is substantial interindividual variability in response. Polymorphisms of the cytochrome P450 (CYP) gene have been identified as a potential risk factor for nonresponse.3 This gene plays a central role in drug-metabolizing processes in the liver, and clopidogrel makes use of these processes to transform into an active metabolite capable of inhibiting platelet aggregation. Identification of CYP2C19 polymorphisms could lead to personalized treatment based on genotype in patients with acute coronary syndrome, and therefore, the US Food and Drug Administration recommends CYP2C19 genotyping for individualized antiplatelet management. 4 The association between CYP2C19 loss-of-function alleles and clinical efficacy of clopidogrel has been studied extensively, and several meta-analyses have summarized the results of those studies.5-8 Systematic reviews and meta-analyses are often considered the highest level of evidence, 9-11 and their popularity in the cardiovascular field increased almost 13 times as fast as the increase in number of published randomized clinical trials.
12However, the interpretation of meta-analyses is confusing when the conclusions of overlapping meta-analyses are discordant. Some meta-analyses on CYP2C19 loss-of-function and clinical efficacy of clopidogrel conclude that the association is proven, 7,8 whereas others conclude the opposite. 5,6 Our objective was to systematically evaluate the discordant evidence for the association between CYP2C19 loss-offunction alleles and clinical efficacy of clopidogrel through a critical methodological appraisal of published meta-analyses.
MATERIALS AND METHODSOur review adheres to the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) statement, 13 and we consulted the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions for methodological aspects of meta-analyses. We systematically investigated how 11 overlapping meta-analyses on the association between CYP2C19 loss-of-function alleles and clinical efficacy of clopidogrel could yield contradictory outcomes. The results of the meta-analyses differed because more recent metaanalyses included more primary studies and some had not included conference abstracts. Conclusions differed because between-study heterogeneity and publication bias were handled differently across meta-analyses. All meta-analyses on the clinical end point observed significant heterogeneity and several reported evidence for publication bias, but only one out of eight statistically significant meta-analyses concluded that therefore the association was unproven and one other refrained from quantifying a pooled estimate because of heterogeneity. For the end point stent thrombosis, all meta-analyses reported statistically significant associations with CYP2C19 loss-of-function alleles with no statistically significant evidence for heterogeneity, b...