ORLANDO, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) — More than 859,000 Americans die of heart attacks or strokes every year. For years, doctors have prescribed aspirin to help prevent a cardiovascular event in healthy people, but research has been mixed on the benefits. Ivanhoe reports on a study that offers new insights.
Could an aspirin a day keep a heart attack away? Cardiologists have prescribed aspirin to reduce the risk of heart attack in healthy individuals for years. But recently the U.S. Preventive Services task force has proposed recommendations to limit daily aspirin use in this group. The panel said aspirin should only rarely be used to prevent heart attacks and strokes in people ages 40 to 70 who don’t have heart disease or haven’t had a cardiovascular event. They say the risks of aspirin in these patients often outweigh the benefits.
“There is risk. Aspirin is associated with bleeding, oftentimes in the form of gastrointestinal bleeding,” detailed Anthony Bavry, MD, an Interventional Cardiologist at University of Florida.
Now a new review of ten studies sheds more light on the matter. Investigators found aspirin produced a 13 percent reduction in cardiovascular disease, with similar benefits seen at older ages in each of the trials. The authors suggest that doctors make individual decisions about prescribing aspirin to healthy individuals on a case-by-case basis, based on benefit-to-risk, not age alone. Still experts recommend people who have heart disease or who’ve had a cardiovascular event still take a daily aspirin. Your best bet is to talk to your doctor to see if a daily aspirin could help you.
Other ways to reduce your risk of a heart attack include stopping smoking, daily exercise, weight loss, and the use of cholesterol-lowering or blood pressure drugs if needed. According to the American Heart Association, more than 80 percent of all cardiovascular events may be prevented by making lifestyle changes.
Contributors to this news report includes: Julie Marks, Producer; Roque Correa, Editor.
Sources:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220105094550.htm
https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/draft-recommendation/aspirin-use-to-prevent-cardiovascular-disease-preventive-medication, https://newsroom.heart.org/news/draft-uspstf-aspirin-recs-for-primary-cvd-prevention-align-with-prior-aha-guideline
https://fmch.bmj.com/content/9/4/e001475
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220105094550.htm
AN ASPIRIN A DAY MAY NOT KEEP A HEART ATTACK AWAY
REPORT #2944
BACKGROUND: Cardiovascular disease, or CVD, is a general term for conditions affecting the heart or blood vessels. It is usually associated with a build-up of fatty deposits inside the arteries and an increased risk of blood clots. CVD is one of the main causes of death and disability in the U.K. and in the U.S., but it can often largely be prevented by leading a healthy lifestyle. According to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 859,000 Americans develop cardiovascular disease and die of heart attacks or stroke every year, which account for more than one in three of all U.S. deaths. The exact cause of CVD isn’t clear, but there are a lot of things that can increase the risk of getting it. Some risk factors for CVD include high blood pressure, smoking, high cholesterol, diabetes, lack of exercise, being overweight or obese, family history of CVD, age, and diet.
(Source: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/cardiovascular-disease/
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220105094550.htm)
THE STUDY: In a study conducted in the second International Study of Infarct Survival trial, 17,187 patients from 417 hospitals were enrolled in the study withing 24 hours after onset of acute myocardial infarction, or MI, which is a type of CVD. Aspirin use resulted in a significant reduction in non-fatal reinfarction, stroke, 5-week vascular mortality, and all-cause mortality. But, according to the American Heart Association’s volunteer president, Donald M. Lloyd-Jones, M.D., recent large trials indicate that, in the current environment, the overall benefit of aspirin is small. In most adult, the benefit of protection against heart attacks and strokes is offset by the potential risk of bleeding caused by aspirin. As a result, it should be used rarely to help prevent heart attacks and stroke among adults ages 40-70 without known cardiovascular disease.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4317158/)
NEW REGULATIONS: According to Columbia University Irving Medical Center, the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force now only conditionally recommends starting aspirin for cardiovascular disease prevention in adults ages 40 through 59-years-old with a 10-year risk of cardiovascular disease or 10 percent or higher who have no risk of serious bleeding. Many experts think that because effective cholesterol and blood-pressure lowering medicines are so common now, aspirin no longer contributes a benefit above and beyond them. The Task Force reviewed the existing evidence on it, including six new studies published since 2016. Adding these studies did not change what was known before about cardiovascular disease benefit or bleeding harms of aspirin—which is that the cardiovascular disease prevention benefit and major bleeding risk are roughly equivalent.
* For More Information, Contact:
Bill Levesque
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