This won’t surprise anyone who’s followed
what I’ve had to say over the years but yet another study has concluded that
for most of us, taking ASA regularly to prevent a first heart attack or stroke,
is actually a crap shoot, that is, it’s very hard to determine if the undoubted
benefits of taking the drug will actually outweigh the huge and severe
potential risks of taking ASA regularly.
In this analysis which looked at several
studies involving over 100,000 patients for about 6 years, the researchers concluded
that for a large population, the overall risks of taking ASA regularly – which
is mainly due to a higher risk of suffering a severe bleeding incident, either
into the brain to cause a hemorrhagic stroke or more commonly from the stomach
causing a severe gastrointestinal hemorrhage - might actually be slightly
higher than the overall benefits, which do include a slightly lower risk of
non-fatal first heart attacks.
In other words, people taking ASA regularly
in this analysis didn’t live any longer than people who weren’t taking it, and
in the end, living longer is what this issue is mainly about.
A couple of important considerations,
though: this caution applies only to people looking to prevent a first heart
attack because the date is pretty clear that for those folks who already had a
heart attack, the overall benefits of ASA outweigh the potential risks.
And second, if you are taking ASA, please
do not stop it just on the basis of a report like this.
Rather, sit down with your own doctor and
go over the potential risks and the potential benefits – to you as a unique
individual – and then you can decide what to do.
Originally posted on the London Drugs Blog - January 10th, 2012
