Another “no brainer” bites the dust: low-dose aspirin does more harm than good

Another mainstream “no brainer” bites the dust.

A recent issue of the VERY mainstream Journal of the American Medical Association carries a study that tested low dose aspirin (100mg per day) against placebo in 3,350 healthy subjects between the ages of 50 and 75.

On average, each subject participated for more than eight years.

Results: No statistically significant difference was found between the two groups in fatal or nonfatal coronary events, strokes, angina, transient heart attack or all- cause mortality.

In short, low-dose aspirin use produced virtually no benefits.

But adverse events tell another story.

The authors write: “Any effect of aspirin on cardiovascular events needs to be balanced against the potential for harm. Although numbers were small, the trial results suggested an increased incidence of major hemorrhage and gastrointestinal ulcer, although not severe anemia, in the aspirin group, and more participants in the aspirin group than in the placebo group had fatal intracranial adverse events.”

So…what do you think? Will this be the turning point? From now on will doctors tell their patients to forget about a daily aspirin because it’s likely to do more harm than good?

Don’t hold your breath.

Doctors! Television medical pundits! Read your JAMA! All the aspirin evidence you need is right there in front of you.

To Your Good Health,

Jenny Thompson

Source:
“Aspirin for Prevention of Cardiovascular Events in a General Population Screened for a Low Ankle Brachial Index” Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 303, No. 9, 3/3/10, jama.ama-assn.org