March 5, 2024 – There is a widespread – and long-standing – belief that swallowing a low-dose aspirin pill each day might help protect you from heart attacks and strokes.
Almost 30 million Americans Take aspirin to stop a primary cardiovascular event (“primary prevention”), and almost 40% of those over 50 years oldAround 49 million people take aspirin either for primary prevention or secondary prevention after a stroke or heart attack.
However, experts have begun to query aspirin's effectiveness, leading healthcare professionals to reevaluate aspirin's role in primary prevention.
In 2019, the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Guideline for primary preventionThe latest available study states that aspirin “should be used infrequently” within the routine primary prevention of a form of diabetes Cardiovascular disease because of lack of net profit.”
This advice was made after weighing the advantages of aspirin use in primary prevention against the chance of cerebral and digestive tract bleeding. The results of three large clinical studies published in 2018 had a serious influence on the rules, said the cardiologist John W. McEvoy, MBBCh, one among the rule co-authors and professor of preventive cardiology on the National University of Ireland in Galway.
“Our initial assessment of the evidence was that it does not demonstrate significant effectiveness of aspirin in preventing heart disease and stroke and that the risk of bleeding probably outweighs the benefit,” he said.
On the opposite hand, McEvoy said, the rule also states that “each patient must make an individual decision about aspirin.” It will not be a one-size-fits-all approach. We didn't say not to provide anyone aspirin because we felt there have been some high-risk patients who might profit from it.”
Age-related recommendations
The United States Preventive Services Task Force, a nongovernmental advisory group, has also commented on the role of aspirin in primary prevention. In 2022, the task force was updated its 2016 advice following a scientific review of the evidence. The group said aspirin use had a “small net benefit” for primary prevention of cardiovascular events, but only in adults aged 40 to 59 years who’ve a ten% or greater risk of a cardiovascular event inside 10 years . It advisable that adults aged 60 and over take aspirin, saying: “It has no net benefit.”
Explaining its advice for older people, the duty force said the chance of gastrointestinal or brain bleeding and stroke related to aspirin increases with age.
Not many studies have been conducted on the risk-benefit query of aspirin use in older adults. But a Secondary analysis of data from one among the 2018 studies that were crucial to the study American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association The guideline notes that the chance of cerebral hemorrhage is critical in people over 70 years of age, while aspirin has no profit for the first prevention of stroke on this population.
All 19,114 participants within the study, conducted in Australia and the United States, were healthy individuals with a mean age of 74 years. Half of them received aspirin and the opposite half a placebo.
Aspirin didn’t produce a statistically significant reduction in the speed of ischemic strokes (essentially the most common type). However, there was a major increase in brain bleeding in those that took aspirin in comparison with those that received the placebo.
Lead writer John J. McNeil, PhD, professor of epidemiology and preventive medicine at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, said that each cerebral hemorrhages and hemorrhagic strokes were more common within the aspirin group and that the incidence of falls in older people increased the likelihood increased these events.
“Most of these hemorrhages occur in people who fall and hit their heads, and we suspect that many of these people hit their heads when they fall,” he said.
Reduced risk of heart problems
The original studies of the good thing about aspirin in the first and secondary prevention of heart problems were conducted several many years ago. Today, aspirin's effectiveness could have diminished because some risk aspects are higher controlled than before, said Anum Saeed, MD, assistant professor of drugs on the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and a cardiologist on the UPMC Heart and Vascular Institute. For example, she said, we now have statins to lower LDL cholesterol (the bad kind) and effective medications to lower blood pressure.
Saeed rigorously considers patients' risk aspects before they begin taking aspirin for primary prevention. Those to whom she would advise taking aspirin include individuals with high amounts of calcium within the coronary artery, individuals with diabetes and patients with high LDL levels of cholesterol, she said.
However, she advises people to manage their risk aspects before beginning to take aspirin, she added. Among other things, she recommends that they lower blood pressure and levels of cholesterol, exercise usually and improve their eating regimen.
If they don't have risk aspects for heart problems, she won't give them aspirin. If they’re over 70, have significant risk aspects and have been taking aspirin for a while effortlessly, she recommends continuing to take it. But she keeps a detailed eye on these patients, ensuring they should not liable to falls, for instance.
McEvoy also tries to manage patients' risk aspects before discussing aspirin with them. If the chance of heart problems is low, he’ll tell them they don't need aspirin. For people over 70, he increasingly points out the risks of aspirin.
Stopping aspirin can pose risks
Should older individuals who have taken aspirin for years proceed to take it for primary prevention? This is a surprisingly difficult query to reply.
In a recent paper, McEvoy and his colleagues attempted to make clear the query by examining combined data from the 2018 aspirin trials. They found that of the 15% of study participants who took aspirin before the study, fewer of those that continued taking it in the course of the study suffered heart attacks or strokes than those that received a placebo as a substitute.
Some observational studies have found similar results, leading McEvoy to consider that folks who take aspirin for primary prevention after which stop taking it have a rather higher risk of cardiovascular events than those that proceed taking it.
Nevertheless, he all the time discusses the benefits and downsides of continuous to take aspirin along with his older patients.
“There are patients who have been taking aspirin for years and have never had a problem with aspirin. They have no history of dyspepsia or gastrointestinal bleeding and have no risk factors for bleeding in the form of falls or taking other medications that may increase the risk.”
Before he gets these patients to stop taking aspirin, he talks to them.
“I say, ‘There is mixed evidence. The risk of bleeding increases with age, but we also know that aspirin can reduce non-fatal cardiovascular disease,” he said.
Some patients are at such a high risk of heart disease or stroke that they are more concerned about this than the risk of bleeding. “I don’t necessarily stop taking aspirin with these patients,” McEvoy said. “But I weigh the risk factors, and if they have other risk factors, I tell them aspirin may not be necessary.”