You may not need Aspirin after all
Should older people in good health start taking Aspirin to prevent heart attacks, strokes, dementia and cancer?
No, according to a study of more than 19,000 people. They took low-dose Aspirin — 100 milligrams — or a placebo every day for a median of 4.7 years. Aspirin did not help them — and may have done harm.
Taking it did not lower their risks of cardiovascular disease, dementia or disability. And it increased the risk of significant bleeding in the digestive tract, brain or other sites that required transfusions or admission to the hospital.
The results were published Sunday in three articles in the New England Journal of Medicine. One disturbing result puzzled the researchers because it had not occurred in previous studies: a slightly greater death rate among those who took Aspirin, mostly because of an increase in cancer deaths — not new cancer cases, but death from the disease. That finding needs more study before any conclusions can be drawn, the authors cautioned. Scientists do not know what to make of it, particularly because earlier studies had suggested that Aspirin could lower the risk of colorectal cancer.
The researchers had expected that Aspirin would help prevent heart attacks and strokes in the study participants, so the results came as a surprise — “the ugly facts which slay a beautiful theory,” the leader of the study, Dr. John McNeil, of the department of epidemiology and preventive medicine at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, said in a telephone interview. The news may also come as a shock to millions of people who have been dutifully swallowing their daily pillsto ward off all manner of ills. Although there is good evidence Aspirin can help people who have already had heart attacks or strokes, or who have a high risk that they will occur, the drug’s value is not so clear for people with less risk, especially older ones.
The new report is the latest in a recent spate of clinical trials that have been trying to determine who really should take Aspirin.