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MONDAY, March 26 (HealthDay News) -- Women who took low to moderate daily doses of aspirin had a reduced death rate, especially from heart disease, according to decades-long research.
The research, based on data from a major trial that has tracked almost 80,000 women since 1976, found that women who reported using aspirin on a regular basis had a 25 percent lower risk of death from any cause than women who didn't take the drug.
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The risk of death from cardiovascular disease was 38 percent lower for aspirin users, and there was also a 12 percent reduction in cancer deaths that took effect after a decade of aspirin use, the researchers found in their report based on the Nurses' Health Study.
The results were published in the March 26 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.
However, an accompanying editorial in the journal cautioned that the results were open to debate and far from definitive.
The dissenting editorial, by Dr. John A. Baron of Dartmouth Medical School, was based in large part on results of a different trial, the Women's Health Study, which followed almost 40,000 women for 11 years and found no reduction in overall deaths or cardiovascular mortality associated with aspirin therapy.
Therefore, Baron said, the new findings "cannot overcome the accumulated evidence that aspirin is not particularly effective for the primary prevention of death from cardiovascular disease in women."
"This is a complicated issue," said Dr. Andrew T. Chan, an assistant professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School, and lead author of the new report. "We understand that aspirin has potential health benefits, but who would aspirin therapy be appropriate for?"
There are "areas of disagreement that need further study" before that question can be answered, Chan said. But there is information from the two large studies and other trials that can help guide women and their physicians, he said.
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