[Secondary prevention of stroke according to PRoFESS and SPARCL]

Stroke is still the leading cause of long-term major disability in developed countries, although several improvements have been achieved in acute stroke therapy (e.g. thrombolysis, stroke-unit treatment,etc.). Therefore, an effective secondary prevention - guided by the etiology and risk factors of stroke - is of particular importance to reduce stroke morbidity. Recently, two important studies (SPARCL and PRoFESS) analyzed the significance of statin therapy as well as the efficacy of different antiplatelet therapies for secondary stroke prevention. In this review we summarize the results and discuss the implications of these findings - including the most recent data - for stroke prevention.