Low-dose aspirin reduces female death rate

BOSTON, March 28 (UPI) -- Women who take low to moderate doses of aspirin have a reduced risk of death, according to Boston researchers.

Dr. Andrew T. Chan of the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston examined the association between aspirin use and death in 79,439 women enrolled in the Nurses' Health Study.

The women were asked in 1980, and every two years through 2004, if they used aspirin regularly and if so, how many tablets were typically taken per week.

More than 45,000 women did not use aspirin; 29,132 took low to moderate doses and 5,002 took more than 14 tablets per week, according to the study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Women who said they used aspirin had a 25 percent lower risk of death from any cause than women who rarely took aspirin.