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from the take-two-aspirin-and-call-me-in-the-morning...if-you-are-still-alive dept.
Aspirin Linked With Increased Risk of Heart Failure in New Study:
The influence of aspirin on heart failure is controversial. This study aimed to evaluate its relationship with heart failure incidence in people with and without heart disease and assess whether using the drug is related to a new heart failure diagnosis in those at risk.
The analysis included 30,827 individuals at risk for developing heart failure who were enrolled from Western Europe and the US into the HOMAGE study. "At risk" was defined as one or more of the following: smoking, obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Participants were aged 40 years and above and free of heart failure at baseline. Aspirin use was recorded at enrolment and participants were classified as users or non-users. Participants were followed up for the first incidence of fatal or non-fatal heart failure requiring hospitalization.
The average age of participants was 67 years and 34% were women. At baseline, a total of 7,698 participants (25%) were taking aspirin. During the 5.3-year follow-up, 1,330 participants developed heart failure.
The investigators assessed the association between aspirin use and incident heart failure after adjusting for sex, age, body mass index, smoking, alcohol use, blood pressure, heart rate, blood cholesterol, creatinine, hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and treatment with renin-angiotensin-aldosterone-system inhibitors, calcium channel blockers, diuretics, beta-blockers, and lipid-lowering drugs. Taking aspirin was independently associated with a 26% raised risk of a new heart failure diagnosis.
Journal Reference:
Blerim Mujaj, Zhen-Yu Zhang, Wen-Yi Yang, et al. Aspirin use is associated with increased risk for incident heart failure: a patient‐level pooled analysis [open], ESC Heart Failure (DOI: 10.1002/ehf2.13688)
(Score: 5, Informative) by Freeman on Tuesday November 23 2021, @06:19PM (1 child)
They had a similar group of people, for whom the only difference was that one group was taking Aspirin. The group taking Aspirin was 26% more at risk of heart failure. Literally 1/4 of the participants were taking Aspirin while 3/4 of the participants weren't taking Aspirin. It's there in plain language. Literally all of the participants had similar troubles. It could end up being some weird bias, poor data, not enough data, or other thing is responsible. That is what further study requires. Check to make sure that the study is good, etc. Then we can know more. All we know now is that it's possible that people that take Aspirin are nearly 25% more likely to develop heart failure.
According to the FDA: https://www.fda.gov/drugs/information-consumers-and-patients-drugs/use-aspirin-primary-prevention-heart-attack-and-stroke [fda.gov]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Wednesday November 24 2021, @09:50AM
Yes, but the ones who were taking Aspirin were prescribed it by their doctor. This may well be because they had more severe symptoms. So there is a systematic effect.
To put it another way, it is not only "not double blind" but also "not single blind" and indeed absolutely not blind at all. The doctors are exactly prescribing Aspirin because the patients are at risk of heart disease, very likely more so than the cohort not taking Aspirin.
I can't say for sure of course, but it is the paper author's job to deal with systematic effects which they have totally not done in this case.