(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- An aspirin a day may keep a heart attack away, but
it could also increase your risk of internal bleeding.
Research shows use of aspirin by patients with no heart disease history reduces
non-fatal heart attacks by about one fifth. However, new data shows it also
increases the risk of internal bleeding by about one third, potentially
canceling out the drug's health benefits.
"The currently available trial results … do not seem to justify general
guidelines advocating the routine use of aspirin in all healthy individuals
above a moderate level of risk for coronary heart disease," the study authors
write.
For patients with a history of stroke or heart attack, long-term aspirin use
reduced the risk of vascular diseases by one fifth, outweighing these patients'
small risk of bleeding.
SOURCE: The Lancet, 2009
