According to medical guidelines, daily aspirin is too high a risk for most healthy people. New study says some can benefit

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A new study published Monday in the medical journal Annals of Internal Medicine came to a different conclusion.

The study found that aspirin reduces the risk of heart problems in at-risk patients and in some patients with no known risk of cardiovascular disease. The researchers concluded that the benefits of aspirin outweigh the harms of bleeding, if one compared the risk of bleeding deaths to that of hospitalization or death by cardiac event. .

According to the study, at least 12.1% of men and 2.5% of women with no history of heart problems had a net benefit of five years of aspirin treatment. The percentage of benefit increases even more if you compare the risk of two hemorrhagic events to two cardiovascular events.

Researchers understood this by looking at data from more than 245,000 healthy adults aged 30 to 79 in New Zealand.

"We have classified each individual in the study as benefiting from aspirin if the number of [cardiovascular disease] The events averted were more important than the number of bleeding events. If 1,000 people had the same characteristics as aspirin to treat with aspirin for 5 years, "said author Vanessa Selak, a senior lecturer in the department of epidemiology and of Population Health Biostatistics at the University of Auckland.
New report says low-dose aspirin is linked to bleeding into the skull

Although the authors conclude that for some people without heart disease, aspirin is "likely to generate a net benefit," they warn that further research will be needed to see if this would apply to people living outside of the community. New Zealand. They also did not study the use of aspirin in people over 79 years old.

The authors of the study do not claim to alter the current guidelines, which were created for the United States by the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association.

The study adds that, if "aspirin is likely to generate a net benefit", it is "difficult" to make a general recommendation in this regard.

Kevin McConway, emeritus professor of applied statistics at the Open University, agrees with their caution.

"Methods of estimating the risk of [cardiovascular disease] and significant bleeds are based on New Zealand data and could give inappropriate numbers for the risks faced by other populations, "said McConway, who was not affiliated with research, at Science Media Center of the United Kingdom to transmit the results of New Zealand to other populations without further research.

Similar conclusions, different interpretation

Previous research has shown that daily intake of low-dose aspirin is associated with an increased risk of bleeding into the skull.
According to a new study, aspirin a day could repel death
Dr. Amit Khera, a professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology at UT Southwestern Medical Center, who has contributed to the writing of the latest recommendations of the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology regarding the Aspirin, said these results are similar to those of the 2018 trio of studies used to create current US guidelines.

Although the results are similar, these studies came to a different conclusion and argued that a daily aspirin-based regimen did not present any significant benefit to the health of the elderly and could be harmful. According to Khera, what is very different is the interpretation of the risk of hemorrhage. Unlike the authors of this study, he thinks the harm is too serious.

"It's not a nosebleed, it's serious bleeding that requires hospitalization and transfusions," Khera said.

Nevertheless, a recent study found that millions of American adults who have never suffered from cardiovascular disease still take aspirin.

"In the past, when patients considered using aspirin daily, we usually answered yes, sometimes no, now when people ask it, it's usually no, you should not take it and, on the occasion, it's a yes, it's a lot more beautiful balance now, "Khera said. "It can help people who have had heart attacks and strokes, but usually healthy people, for most people it does not do them any favors, taking aspirin."

Instead, doctors urge patients to adopt healthy lifestyle habits, such as not smoking, controlling their blood pressure and cholesterol through exercise and a diet.

Selak, who wrote the new study, points out the limit in this decision.

"There is clearly an advantage of aspirin in terms of reducing the risk of [cardiovascular disease] These events are based on a recently published meta-analysis of all relevant trials on aspirin in people without CVD, "said Selak.The challenge is that aspirin also increases the risk of" high blood pressure. " major haemorrhages.

"What our study has shown is that there are people likely to benefit overall from aspirin, taking into account the damage associated with bleeding, but a personalized prediction of the pros and cons is needed to identify these people. "

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