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Aspirin is of particular interest because it is one of the most widely available over-the-counter drugs. Its cost, at just pennies per dose, is minimal compared to other commonly used anti-Covid drugs such as remdesivir, which can cost thousands of dollars for typical treatment.
Aspirin can help prevent blood clots, which is why people who have had a heart attack are often advised to take a baby aspirin every day.
“The reason we started looking at aspirin and Covid is because in the spring we all realized that all of these patients started having a lot of thrombotic complications, or a lot of blood clots that formed all over their body, ”Dr. Jonathan Chow, told CNN, assistant professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine at the George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences.
“This is why we thought that using an antiplatelet agent or an anticoagulant, like aspirin, might be helpful in COVID-19,” Chow said.
The team reviewed the records of 412 patients admitted to several US hospitals between March and July 2020. About 24% of patients received aspirin within 24 hours of being admitted to hospital, or within seven days before. their admission to hospital. But most, 76%, did not receive the drug. Aspirin use was associated with a 44% reduction in mechanical ventilation, a 43% reduction in ICU admissions and a 47% reduction in hospital mortality, the researchers found.
Other studies have found similar results. A study, published in the journal PLOS One, examined more than 30,000 U.S. veterans with Covid-19 and found that those who already took aspirin were twice as likely to die as those who did not prescribe the pills daily.
Chow warned that one of the limitations of her team’s new study was that it looked at medical records and didn’t randomly assign patients to take aspirin or a placebo.
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