Friday, October 17, 2008

Aspirin no heart protection for diabetics: study

Doctors should not routinely give aspirin to people with diabetes to help guard against a heart attack or stroke.

"Although aspirin is cheap and universally available, practitioners and authors of guidelines need to heed the evidence that aspirin should be prescribed only in patients with established symptomatic cardiovascular disease," William Hiatt of the University of Colorado wrote in the British Medical Journal.

The study led by Jill Belch and colleagues at the University of Dundee in Scotland included data on 1,276 men and women who had never had a heart attack or stroke but were at high risk because they had diabetes or peripheral arterial disease.

The researchers gave some people either aspirin or a placebo and others an antioxidant or placebo. They found that after eight years the number of heart attacks and strokes was about the same.

The researchers noted that aspirin remains effective for reducing risk among men and women who have already had a heart attack or stroke.

Bonnie - yet again, the one-size-fits-all drug mentality, in this case aspirin, proves to be misguided.

No comments: