Aspirin ‘can cut risk of premature births’

TAKING a quarter of an aspirin pill every day during pregnancy could cut the risk of having a premature baby, research suggests.

A study of almost 12,000 women found that taking 81 milligrams of aspirin a day – a quarter of a 300mg pill – from the sixth week of pregnancy to the 36th lowered the danger by 11 per cent.

The research, conducted by the US National Institutes of Health, could offer a cheap and safe way for women to lower risk to their unborn babies.

Every year 60,000 children are born prematurely in Britain – roughly one in 13 of all live births.

Babies born early are at risk of serious problems, including breathing issues, heart problems, learning difficulties and death.

There is very little doctors can do aside from deliver the baby if labour starts early – so anything to prevent this happening could save lives.

Study author Dr Marion KosoThomas, of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, said: ‘Our results suggest that low-dose aspirin therapy in early pregnancy could provide an inexpensive way to lower the pre-term birth rate in first-time mothers.’

The research team tracked 11,976 women pregnant for the first time in countries including India, Pakistan and Kenya.

Roughly half were assigned at random to receive 81mg of aspirin daily and the other group received a placebo ‘dummy’ pill.

Pre-term birth – taking place before 37 weeks of pregnancy – occurred in 116 of every 1,000 women who took aspirin and 131 in 1,000 women who took the placebo, an 11 per cent reduction.

Birth before 34 weeks was reduced by 25 per cent. And women who took aspirin were 15 per cent less likely to have a stillbirth or baby who died in the first seven days.

The researchers, writing in the Lancet medical journal, said: ‘We saw no increase in serious adverse events in mothers or infants in the low-dose aspirin group.’

Aspirin has been used for decades to reduce the risk of pre-eclampsia in pregnancy – a common condition linked to blood pressure. But this study is the first to investigate its use to reduce the chance of a premature birth.

Writing in a linked editorial piece in the same journal, Julie Quinlivan, of the Australia National University, said: ‘The trial... is the first major study that evaluates if the protective effects [of aspirin] are sufficient to justify use as a global pregnancy measure for the prevention of pre-term birth.

‘The intervention has many merits – aspirin is cheap to produce and can be easily stored, making it simple to implement in low-resource settings.’

But she added: ‘The benefits might not apply in high-resource obstetric settings, where rates of pre-term birth might already be low, and clinical guidelines already in place recommend clinical screening of pregnant women to identify those at increased risk of hypertensive diseases of pregnancy, and prescription of prophylactic aspirin in identified cases.’

Babies are considered ‘viable’ at 24 weeks, meaning they can survive birth. But the earlier a baby is born, the more vulnerable it is, the NHS says.

‘Cheap to produce and easy to store’