Some people are resistant to the
drug's anti-clotting effect, and they may have a threefold higher risk of death,
heart attack or stroke.
Millions of Americans rely on an
aspirin a day to help keep heart attacks and strokes away. But a new study in
the Journal of the American College of Cardiology shows that it doesn’t for
everyone.
Dr. Eric Topol of the Cleveland Clinic
Foundation stated that, "Probably there has been no medicine that has had a
greater impact in our field than aspirin, but we took for granted that it worked
in everyone,"
"We have to increasingly appreciate
that aspirin resistance is real and not turn our backs on it," he said. "And we
need to hunt this thing down: the cause, the specific ways to more rapidly
screen for it, find its genetic basis -- which is only a theory at the moment --
and protect these patients. They are taking aspirin, but they are not deriving
benefit from it. So there are a lot of people out there who have the illusion of
being protected by aspirin."
The researchers enrolled 326 patients
between January 1997 and September 1999 who had a history of cardiovascular
disease but were stable at the time they joined the study. Based on blood tests
performed after each patient had been taking 325 mg of aspirin for at least a
week, 17 patients (5.2 percent) were found to be resistant to the anti-clotting
effect of aspirin. (Typical aspirin therapy uses 81 mg or 162 mg of aspirin
daily.)
During an average follow-up period of
almost two years, aspirin-resistant patients were more than three times as
likely to die or suffer a heart attack or stroke.
If aspirin resistance is related to a genetic mutation, an inexpensive genetic screening test might be possible, but first researchers would need to find the right gene.
Source: Diabetes In Control Dot Dot Com.
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