WASHINGTON, March 21 (UPI) -- Contradicting previous research, a new study has found that a daily low dose of aspirin helps women, like men, avoid blot clots.
A once daily 81 milligram dose of aspirin helps lower the potential in both men and women for clot-forming blood cells to stick together in narrow blood vessels, according to a study from Johns Hopkins University published online Thursday by the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Clots in blood vessels of the heart and brain can cause heart attacks and strokes.
However, while the drug's overall effects on blood cell function were the same for men and women, the investigators found that women's platelets reacted somewhat more strongly to aspirin before the start of therapy and remained so even after treatment.
The study findings challenge the conclusions from several other recent studies, including the federal Women's Health Study, which showed low-dose aspirin had no effect in preventing heart attacks in women, even though it worked in men. Previous results, the researchers say, were not likely caused by the failure of aspirin to prevent platelets from clumping together and forming blood clots in women.
"Women are clearly benefiting from taking aspirin and should continue to take it to improve their cardiovascular health," says study senior investigator Diane Becker, a professor at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health. "Aspirin has been proven by all previous studies to lower the risk of stroke and, as our latest findings show, it also reduces platelet aggregation that can lead to potentially fatal clots in blood vessels."
"Further research is required to get a definitive answer as to whom aspirin really benefits, under what circumstances it does work and does not work, and just how much is required in different people," said study co-author Nauder Faraday, an associate professor at Hopkins.
