New Study Warns Against Starting Healthy, Older Adults on Daily, Low-Dose Aspirin

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine argues against having healthy, older people start taking low-dose aspirin daily, reports KERA News . The investigators followed some 20,000 people in Australia and the United States, most of whom were older than 70. The participants took 100 milligrams of low-dose aspirin, or a placebo, each day for an average of 4.7 years. The aspirin did not reduce their risk of cardiovascular disease, and it also elevated their rates of bleeding and mortality. A shocking finding was that aspirin did not benefit any of the participants for primary prevention of heart attack or stroke. "In my particular practice, if someone has been on low-dose aspirin for many years and they haven't had any issues with bleeding or other issue, I probably will not stop it," says Neeraj Badhey with Texas Health Hurst-Euless-Bedford. "But I may not start people on it going forward." The study results are inapplicable to people who have had a heart attack. "If you've had a heart attack or stroke in the past, aspirin is very important to prevent recurrence," states Badhey.