We don’t mean to have it in for aspirin, but following last week’s alert about its inability to protect against cancer, another study has revealed that it’s equally ineffective against heart attack.
This latest discovery is a bit of a shock for all of you who have listened to doctor’s advice and included aspirin in your daily health regime. If it was good for anything, it was as a protective agent against myocardial infarction (MI), or heart attack, we were told.
Well, when the theory was tested on 39,876 women aged over 45, the largest ever group assembled for a medical trial, the drug offered virtually no protection against a heart attack.
It did slightly reduce the risk of stroke, however, but researchers say that this small benefit has to be weighed against the far higher risk of serious gastro-intestinal bleeding, a common side effect of aspirin. Some of the participants who suffered bleeding needed a transfusion.
The group was split in two: one took 100 mg aspirin every other day, and the rest took a placebo, and the results were monitored over a 10-year period.