BATON ROUGE — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a new stroke prevention drug this week that may lower the chance of another stroke for some people who have already had one.

The drug is approved under the brand name Sunharbo. It is approved for use with standard therapy for some patients who had a mild-to-moderate stroke caused by a clot that did not form in the heart and for those who had what's often called a mini-stroke or transient ischemic attack.

"It's a game changer in adding this medication," Dr. Andrew Russman said.

Russman led Cleveland Clinic's clinical trial site for the new class of stroke prevention drug. "This is the first kind of new class of medications that's become available in 20 years," Russman said.

Russman says the new drug affects a protein called factor 11, which is activated when blood clots that can lead to a stroke are formed. He says inhibiting it does not impact normal healing.

"Most conventional blood thinning medicines both reduce clotting and increase bleeding, whereas this medicine doesn't have a significant effect upon the increase of bleeding, but it does reduce clotting," Russman said.