Aspirin May Reduce Stroke Effects

Symptoms milder in those who took it, study finds

By Ed Edelson
HealthScoutNews Reporter

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THURSDAY, Dec. 6 (HealthScoutNews) -- If you've taken as little as one aspirin in the week before you have a stroke, it'll likely be milder than ones that hit people not taking aspirin, says a new study.

The study of data on 1,275 people was done to bolster use of aspirin, which is recommended to prevent stroke and other cardiovascular conditions in high-risk people, says Dr. Janet L. Wilterdink, associate professor of neurology at Brown Medical School, in Providence, R.I. She is lead author of a report in this month's Stroke, a journal of the American Heart Association.

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"Traditionally, clinical trials just count the number of strokes," Wilterdink says. "That is an incomplete way of seeing how well aspirin works. It is also important to look at the severity of strokes."

Wilterdink and her colleagues used data from a stroke study that began in 1990. Almost 40 percent of the patients who had strokes said they'd taken aspirin in the week before their attacks. Measuring severity by a standard National Institutes of Health scale, the researchers found that 50.3 percent of aspirin users had strokes classified as mild, compared with 43 percent of nonusers. And 9.6 percent of aspirin users had severe strokes, compared with 14.8 percent of nonusers.

Wilterdink acknowledges the study has weaknesses. For example, patients were asked simply whether they had taken aspirin the week before the stroke, not whether they were taking it regularly. "I suspect that most people who were taking aspirin were taking it on a daily basis," but the researchers don't know that for sure, Wilterdink says. Also, the study was limited to strokes caused by blockages and didn't include those caused by bleeding. The researchers also didn't take into account other blood-thinning or anticlotting drugs the stroke victims were taking.

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