Short Course: Many who take aspirin daily don’t need it, finds study

Many healthy people take a daily aspirin to reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke, but a new study has found that more than 11 per cent of them should not be doing so. Aspirin has well established benefits, but also carries the risk of gastrointestinal bleeding. The American Heart Association guidelines recommend daily aspirin for primary prevention in people with a 10-year cardiovascular risk of 10 per cent or more. Other guidelines suggest the cut-off should be a risk of 6 per cent. Researchers studied records of 68,808 patients taking aspirin for primary cardiovascular prevention in various kinds of medical practices between 2008 and 2011. They found that 7,972 of them, or 11.6 per cent, were taking aspirin daily despite having a cardiovascular disease risk of less than 6 percent. In some groups, inappropriate use was even more common. For example, 17 per cent of women taking aspirin had less than a 6 percent risk.