The saga of aspirin: Could this wonder drug be actually dangerous

Used to treat pain, fever, and inflammation, aspirin is commonplace in everyone’s medicine cabinets. It’s been commercially available for over 100 and around the world, millions of people are prescribed aspirin.

However, over the last few years, studies have been contradictory regarding its benefits and most importantly its possible side effects. Numerous studies are still uncovering the uses for this wonder drug and are investigating if its side effects are really as dangerous as claimed.

Used to treat fevers and colds as an analgesic, more recently aspirin has been recommended as a prophylactic to treat heart disease and increasingly there is evidence it might useful in stopping the development of Alzheimer or different types of cancer.

Millions of people are prescribed aspirin after they had a heart attack or a stroke to prevent blood clots. Doctors in the UK generally prescribe daily aspirin (75mg) for life after a person has a stroke or heart attack to help prevent more attacks.

Daily aspirin could be behind more than 3,000 deaths a year in the UK

Now, a major study available found that taking a daily aspirin could be far more dangerous than it was thought, causing more than 3,000 deaths a year in the UK

The study conducted by Oxford University found that people over the age of 75 who take the blood-thinning drug are ten times likely than younger patients to face a significantly elevated risk of serious or even fatal bleeding.

Scientists found that, for patients aged under 65, the annual rate of disabling or fatal bleeds was less than 0.5% (around one person in every 200 people taking the medication).

On the other, for people aged 75 to 84, this rose to three people having major bleeds in every 200.

The British researchers emphasised that the results did not mean older patients should stop taking aspirin altogether but use a heartburn drug, which can decrease the risk of gastrointestinal bleeding by up to 90%.

Heartburn medication would allow people 75 years and older to keep the preventative benefits of aspirin while avoiding its dangerous side-effects, they reported in the medical journal The Lancet.

Studies on the efficiency of aspirin have been contradictory over the years

Invented by Bayer in 1897 and now widely available over the counter, aspirin is generally viewed as harmless, bleeding has long been a recognised a serious side effect.

In May 2016, Oxford University scientists said people should consider taking aspirin immediately after a minor stroke to prevent or limit the harm caused by further strokes. Researchers found that 100,000 people over 50 in the UK one is likey to have a stroke every day. In the days after a minor attack, the risks rise to 1 in 20 and said that taking aspirin immediately reduces the risk of another stroke by 80%.

On the other hand, a study from 2014 by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) found that aspirin should no longer be used to try to prevent strokes in people with a common heart rhythm disorder as it is actually ineffective. This contradicted their previous advice, issued in 2006, which approved aspirin as a treatment for stroke.

Campbell Cowan, chair of the group that drew up the health guideline, said: “Aspirin has been a little bit of a smokescreen to anticoagulation. We now know that aspirin is not safer and it is questionable whether it has any effect at all, so aspirin is no longer recommended for stroke prevention.”

In 2013, a team at Warwick Medical School was asked to assess the evidence by the NHS National Institute for Health Research and concluded that in the case of heart attacks and strokes giving everyone aspirin would cause “net harm due to increased potential for bleeding”.

Medical experts warn that the risk of aspirin are often underestimated although internal bleeding is a well-recognised side effect of aspirin, many healthy take it without a prescription, because it can easily be bought over the counter.

Even among people with no history of heart problems or stroke, the risk of gastrointestinal bleeding goes up with age for aspirin users, other research has shown.