Posted March 31, 2012
– It’s been a common part of preventive care for people worried about heart attacks, but a new study could have hundreds of thousands of Americans rethinking that daily dose of aspirin.
While nearly a third of middle-aged Americans regularly take aspirin in the hope of preventing a heart attack or a stroke or lowering their cancer risk, new research shows that, in some cases, it may be doing more harm than good.
Recently, researchers in London reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine that they had analyzed nine randomized studies of aspirin use in the United States, Europe and Japan that included more than 100,000 participants. The study subjects had never had a heart attack or stroke; all regularly took aspirin or a placebo to determine whether aspirin benefits people who have no established heart disease.
Researchers found that regular aspirin users were 10 percent less likely than the others to have any type of heart event, and 20 percent less likely to have a nonfatal heart attack. But they were also about 30 percent more likely to develop an ulcer.
Dr. Steve Campbell at Mayo Clinic Health System in Mankato said the research could change the way doctors in Mankato and everywhere else handle aspirin use in patients.
“I think it is worth looking into further,” Campbell said. “Don’t blindly put folks on aspirin on the assumption that everybody benefits.”
Campbell said they normally use a diagnostic tool that helps them decide what risk a patient may have for heart attacks or strokes in the next 10 years.
He said the rule of thumb most doctors go by is that, if a person’s risk is 3 percent or more, then he or she may benefit from the smallest dose of aspirin, which is 81 milligrams (aspirin comes in doses of 81, 162 and 325 milligrams.)
©2012 The Free Press (Mankato, Minn.)