Low-dose aspirin found to increase risk of intracranial hemorrhage
By ralphflores // 2019-11-20
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Taking aspirin could potentially increase the risk of intracranial hemorrhage, even among people without symptomatic cardiovascular disease. The finding was part of a review made by an international team of researchers from China and the U.S., and was published in JAMA Neurology.
  • For the review, the team investigated the link between low-dose aspirin use and intracranial hemorrhage risk.
  • The team utilized the following data sources: PubMed, Embase, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, and ClinicalTrials.gov. Relevant studies from January 1966 to October 30, 2018 were included in the review.
  • In particular, the team looked at randomized clinical trials that compared low-dose aspirin with a control and recorded the endpoints of intracranial hemorrhage separately for the two groups.
  • Using the Mantel-Haenszel method, the team computed a random-effect estimate for each study. They used a 95-percent confidence interval for relative risk as a measure of aspirin vs control on risk of intracranial hemorrhage.
  • They included studies that provided outcomes for aspirin versus control in terms of risk for intracranial, subdural or extradural, intracerebral and subarachnoid hemorrhages.
  • Thirteen clinical trials -- a total of 134,446 patients -- were included in the meta-analysis. Based on data from the random-effect estimate, low-dose aspirin was linked to an increased risk of any intracranial bleeding.
  • The greatest relative risk increase that the researchers identified was for subdural or extradural hemorrhage.
In sum, low-dose aspirin was linked to an overall increased risk of intracranial hemorrhages. Medicine.news has more studies on the adverse effects of aspirin. Journal Reference: Huang WY, Saver JL, Wu YL, Lin CJ, Lee M, Ovbiagele B. FREQUENCY OF INTRACRANIAL HEMORRHAGE WITH LOW-DOSE ASPIRIN IN INDIVIDUALS WITHOUT SYMPTOMATIC CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE. JAMA Neurology. 2019;76(8):906. DOI: 10.1001/jamaneurol.2019.1120
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