A daily, low dose of aspirin can prevent heart attacks in elderly women. But it is not successful in preventing first heart attacks in all women, according to the findings of the Women’s Health Study.
Researchers studied nearly 40,000 women 45-years-old and older for 10 years. They found was that aspirin did not prevent first heart attacks or death from cardiovascular causes for women overall. But a low-dose aspirin therapy in the 10% of women in the study ages 65 and older did reduce the risk of major cardiovascular events by 26%.
A low dose of aspirin reduced the risk of stroke by 17% for all types of stroke, and 24% for ischemic stroke, the type caused by brain artery blockage.
This result was highly significant because “we have more strokes than heart attacks in women,” according to Julie E. Buring, a professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. She presented her report March 7 during a meeting of the American College of Cardiology.
Similar large-scale studies in men have found a reduction in the risk of heart attack but a negligible effect on the risk of stroke.
A study report also will be published in the March 31 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.
