Low-dose aspirin's risk-benefit ratio may not add up for younger women

LONDON — The pros of giving healthy women regular low dose aspirin to stave off such serious illness as cancer and heart disease are outweighed by the cons, suggests a large study published online last week in the journal Heart.

 

But the balance begins to shift with increasing age, and limiting this form of primary prevention to women ages 65 years and older proved better than either not taking aspirin at all or treating women from the age of 45 years and older.

 

Reseachers based their findings on almost 30,000 healthy women, who were at least 45 years old and taking part in the Women's Health Study. Participants were randomly assigned to take either 100 mg of aspirin or a placebo every other day, to see whether aspirin curbed their risk of heart disease, stroke and cancer.

 

Compared with placebo, regular aspirin was linked to a lower risk of heart disease, stroke, bowel cancer, and in some women, other cancers, but only marginally so.

 

And this slight health gain was trumped by the prevalence of internal gastrointestinal bleeding, which affected two thirds of the women taking the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug.

 

The risk of gastrointestinal bleeding rose with age, but so too did the drug's impact on lowering the risk of bowel cancer and cardiovascular disease, with the balance appearing to tip in favor of the drug for women ages 65 years and older.

 

The researchers calculated that older than 15 years, 29 older-than-65 year olds would need to be treated with aspirin to prevent one case of cancer or heart disease/stroke.