Aspirin has no health benefit for fit and healthy seniors

Many healthy people over 70 take a small dose of aspirin every day to protect themselves from heart attacks and strokes. Australian scientists have now found that this does not improve the health of those affected. On the contrary: the known side effect of the increased risk of bleeding was confirmed.

Patient adherence to aspirin for the prevention of heart attack or stroke decreases with time. Improving adherence can help reduce the risk of such diseases. (Image: BillionPhotos.com/fotolia.com)

Millions of seniors take a small dose of aspirin every morning without any medical indication. They do so in the hope of preventing, among other things, the first heart attack or stroke. There is little evidence in the research supporting this assumption.

Now, a large Australian study has found that taking low-dose aspirin (100 mg) daily when taking healthy people over the age of 70 does not significantly reduce the risk of first-time heart attack or stroke.

More than 19,000 people in Australia and the US - 16,700 of them in southeastern Australia - were studied over a seven-year period. The results show that low-dose aspirin does not prolong a healthy life. It also does not help to live longer or reduce the risk of a heart attack or stroke to any significant extent. There are only very minor differences between the experimental groups with aspirin and those with placebo.

Increased risk of bleeding, a known side effect of aspirin, has been confirmed by the study. There is a small increase (3.8 percent) in cases of serious bleeding in the subjects who took aspirin. By contrast, the increase in the placebo-taking subjects was only 2.8 percent.

The scientists conclude that aspirin can not be taken completely without hesitation. At the same time, they warn that the study's results do not apply to those who have already had a heart attack or stroke, or who are suffering from angina pectoris. In these cases, aspirin is recommended as an important preventative medicine. Source: idw news. The study can be found here. (sb, pm)