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 05 September 2008 09:52 BST

Aspirin 'best for men'

Thursday, 18 Oct 2007 11:30
Men's heart health may benefit more than women's from aspirin
Men may benefit more from taking aspirin than women, a new study suggests.

The drug is often used in heart attack prevention but results from studies on its effectiveness vary widely.

Some have shown that there is no difference between aspirin and placebo (dummy drug) while others say taking aspirin reduces the risk of a heart attack by more than 50 per cent.

Scientists at the James Hogg iCapture Centre for Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Research say this could be because aspirin is less effective in women.

They studied 23 previously published clinical trials on the effect of aspirin on heart attack prevention in a total of 113,000 patients.

The researchers then analysed how much the ratio of men to women affected the outcome of these trials.

Writing in the online journal BMC Medicine, they claim that trials which predominantly recruited men had the largest risk reduction in non-fatal heart attacks.

Mainly-female trials did not demonstrate a significant risk reduction in these attacks.

"We found that a lot of the variability in these trials seems to be due to the gender ratios, supporting the theory that women may be less responsive to aspirin than men for heart protection," commented Dr Don Sin, one of the study's authors.

"From our findings we would caution clinicians on the prescribing aspirin to women, especially for primary prevention of heart attacks. Whether or not other pharmaceutical products would be more effective for women is unclear; more sex-specific studies should now be conducted."
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