Daily aspirin therapy ups risk of brain hemorrhage

In 1988, medical researchers studied a small group of men who were at high-risk for heart attacks. They found that taking daily doses of aspirin could cut the number of heart attacks in half.

But, they also found that the same dosage of daily aspirin caused the men to suffer more strokes. Because of that sometimes fatal "side effect" -- plus the admittedly limited study group -- the researchers warned that patients should NOT start taking aspirin to prevent heart disease.

The day after their report was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the aspirin makers -- who were apparently given advance notice of the publication -- flooded the media with press releases saying that "an aspirin a day" could prevent heart attacks. For more than a decade, people have swallowed the pills every day in the misguided belief that they were safeguarding their cardiac health.

Even medical doctors believed the lie, and continue to prescribe aspirin to patients as a preventive measure, even if they are at low risk for heart attacks.

Instead of making them healthier, the aspirins are increasing their risk of stroke and serious gastrointestinal damage, as well as numerous other potential side effects.

Recently, researchers found more evidence that the so-called "aspirin therapy" increases the risk of brain hemorrhages, also known as hemorrhagic stroke.

Jiang He, M.D., Ph.D., of Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans, and colleagues reviewed 16 controlled trials of preventive aspirin therapy to estimate the risk of hemorrhagic stroke associated with aspirin treatment. Brain hemorrhages account for about 15% of all strokes.

The research showed that although aspirin lowered the risk for heart attack by about 32%, it increased the risk for hemorrhagic stroke by 84%.

Previous research into the dangers of aspirin has shown that:

SOURCES: Journal of the American Medical Association, Dec. 9, 1998.

"The preliminary report of the findings of the aspirin component of the ongoing Physicians' Health Study; the FDA perspective on aspirin for the primary prevention of myocardial infarction." Journal of the American Medical Association, June 3, 1988 v259 n21 p3158(3).