by f00die » Tue Sep 18, 2018 3:01 pm
“Preventive medicine is focusing on older people, how to keep them out of nursing homes, alive and healthy,” Dr. McNeil said. ”Why would an elderly person be taking a drug if it doesn’t keep them alive and healthy any longer? A lot of the previous studies have looked at aspirin and heart disease. But a lot of drugs do good things and bad things. Just looking at one doesn’t seem to be enough.”
The study enrolled 16,703 people from Australia, and 2,411 from the United States, starting in 2010. They were assigned at random to take low-dose aspirin (100 milligrams a day) or a placebo. That is slightly more than the widely sold dose that most people take, 81 milligrams.
With a median follow-up of 4.7 years, the two groups had no significant difference in their rates of dementia, physical disability or cardiovascular problems.
But those on aspirin were more likely to have serious bleeding — it occurred in 3.8 percent, as opposed to 2.7 percent in the placebo group.
The death rates also differed: 5.9 percent in the aspirin group, and 5.2 percent in those taking placebos. Much of the difference was the results of a higher rate of cancer deaths.
Dr. McNeil said his team could not explain the apparent increase in cancer deaths. They wondered if excess bleeding might have contributed to deaths in cancer patients, but did not find evidence of it. They will continue to follow the participants, and to study tissue samples from cancer patients who died.
Although it may seem counterintuitive, he said the cancer finding does not rule out the possibility that aspirin can help prevent colorectal malignancies. The protective effect may not show up until people have been taking aspirin for some time, longer than the average follow-up in the study.
Dr. McNeil, 71, does not take aspirin.
