Benefit of aspirin for healthy people is uncertain

A new study has shown that, while taking aspirin is beneficial in preventing heart attacks and strokes among people with established cardiovascular disease (secondary prevention), its benefits don't clearly outweigh the risks in healthy people (primary prevention). Researchers at the Clinical Trial Service Unit at the University of Oxford analysed data from a number of primary and secondary prevention trials that had compared long-term aspirin use against controls. The findings are published in The Lancet. In the primary prevention trials, aspirin reduced the risk of a non-fatal heart attack by about one fifth. This corresponds to five fewer such episodes each year for every 10,000 people treated. This is offset by a comparable increase in bleeds with long-term aspirin use. One extra stroke is caused by bleeding and three extra gastrointestinal bleeds occur each year per 10,000 treated.