Heart attack study warns against aspirin

Published on Monday 31 August 2009 01:59

HEALTHY people taking aspirin to prevent heart attacks could be doing themselves more harm than good, experts concluded yesterday.

Millions of Britons are believed to be taking a daily dose of the drug in the hope it acts as an insurance against heart trouble. But its routine use for the prevention of vascular problems "cannot be supported", UK professors from the Aspirin for Asymptomatic Atherosclerosis (AAA) concluded.

Professor Peter Weissberg, of the British Heart Foundation which part-funded the research, said: "The findings agree with our current advice that people who do not have symptomatic or diagnosed artery or heart disease should not take aspirin."

The study recruited 28,980 men and women aged 50 to 75 who were free of clinically evident cardiovascular disease in Scotland.

Reducing the risk of cardiovascular problems had to be set against the increased risk of internal bleeding, the study said.

In patients who have had a heart attack, the risk of a second is so much higher the balance is in favour of taking aspirin.