Millions of people take aspirin for the wrong reasons, says new study

Traditional thinking is to keep an aspirin a day away from heart problems, but in recent years questions have been asked about this approach.

Now, the results of a new study show how many people extract a daily aspirin when they do not need it (and should not perhaps be).

According to the most recent recommendations from the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the American Heart Association (AHA), anyone over age 70 suffering from heart disease or anyone over young with heart disease and increased risk of bleeding, should not take a daily aspirin.

The official opinion now is that only a select number of people aged 40 to 70 who are at higher risk of developing heart disease should take between 75 and 100 milligrams of aspirin a day, and this call must be made through doctor.

Using the latest available figures – from the 2017 National Health Interview Survey, which is representative of the US population – researchers badyzed a sample of 14,000 adults over 40 years old.

Then, by extending the results to the entire American population, the study estimated that about 29 million people aged 40 and over were taking daily aspirin without experiencing known heart disease; 6.6 million of them do it without a recommendation from their doctor.

According to the study, 10 million people over age 70 without any heart disease problems still take an aspirin every day, which the latest CAC / AHA guidelines specifically advise against.

"Many patients are confused about this," Colin O. Brien, physician and lead author of the study, told The Associated Press, of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston (BIDMC) in Boston.

"We hope more primary care physicians will talk about the use of aspirin for their patients, and that more patients will talk with their doctors."

Even though the data on taking aspirin in this study date back to before the latest update of the recommendations for cardiovascular health published in March 2019, it is still worrying that millions of people are taking drugs then that they should not.

It should also be emphasized that daily intake of aspirin is always recommended to people who have already had a heart attack because of its anticoagulant properties. The problem is that doctors must make the call, and that a large number of people in the United States might not know that their daily aspirin habit might be useless or harmful.

Earlier this year, a study of 164,000 people unaffected by heart disease showed that the absolute risk of heart attacks, strokes or deaths resulting from cardiovascular events was 0, 38% lower depending on the daily intake of aspirin. At the same time, the data showed a higher absolute risk of severe internal bleeding of 0.47%.

Other studies have come to similar conclusions: this intake of aspirin is not so beneficial, especially as people get older.

"Although earlier guidelines from the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology recommend aspirin to people not at high risk of bleeding, the 2019 guidelines now explicitly recommend not to not use aspirin in people over the age of 70 who do not suffer from heart disease or stroke, "said general internist Christina C. Wee , also from BIDMC.

"Our findings suggest that a significant portion of adults could take aspirin without their doctor's advice and potentially without their knowledge."

In other words, for many of us, taking an aspirin a day has little benefit and a high risk of other health complications. As always, the best person to talk to is your doctor. Do not badume that the old aspirin rules still apply.

And the CAC / AHA still recommends that the best way to guard against heart health problems is to focus on a healthy lifestyle – eat what you eat and how much exercise you do – rather than to take a daily aspirin.

"These findings are applicable to adults who do not have a history of cardiovascular disease or stroke," says Stephen Juraschek, BIDMC's primary care physician.

"If you are currently taking aspirin, talk to your doctor to find out if you still need it."

The research was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.