Telling people to take a daily aspirin to ward off heart disease may do them more harm than good, experts have claimed.
Thousands of patients at high risk of heart disease and stroke take an aspirin each day because studies have suggested it can lower the risk of the conditions by up to 10 per cent, while some evidence suggests it can also protect against cancer.
But daily use of the drug is also known in some cases to cause complications such as internal bleeding and haemorrhagic stroke – a stroke caused by a burst blood vessel rather than a blockage.
Experts from Warwick University reviewed existing evidence and found that there were various reported benefits of taking aspirin each day, including a 10 per cent drop in heart attacks and stroke, and a 15 per cent drop in heart disease.
These reductions alone could result in between 33 and 46 fewer deaths per 100,000 people taking the treatment, they reported in a paper published by the National Institute for Health Research.
Some studies suggested it could prevent 34 deaths from coloretal cancer per 100,000 patients.
But daily use of the drug was also linked to a 37 per cent increase in gastrointestinal bleeding and a 32-38 per cent higher risk of haemorrhagic stroke, leading to 68-117 and 8-10 more deaths per 100,000 patients respectively.
Aileen Clarke, Professor of Public Health Research at Warwick University, said: “There is an incredibly fine balance between the possible benefits and the risks of the intervention.
“We need to be extremely careful about over-promoting aspirin intervention without having first fully understood these negative sideeffects.”