Continue with your prescribed aspirin, diabetics told
Saturday, 18 October 2008
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Thousands of diabetes sufferers across Northern Ireland were last night urged to keep taking any prescribed daily aspirin despite the publication of new research which questions its ability to prevent heart attacks.
Diabetes charity, Diabetes UK Northern Ireland, and the Pharmaceutical Society of Northern Ireland have both advised patients prescribed a daily dose of aspirin to speak to their doctor or pharmacist about any concerns raised by the development.
They were reacting to Scottish research published by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) which suggests that aspirin should not be routinely used to prevent heart attacks in people with diabetes.
This is in contradiction to many guidelines which advocate people with the condition take aspirin to counter the underlying high risk of heart attack and stroke.
The new research found that people who showed no symptoms of heart disease, received no benefit after regularly taking aspirin.
But it also revealed that there were still groups of people who would benefit from taking aspirin, such as those who have already suffered a heart attack or stroke as the drug could reduce the risk of future related problems by a quarter.
Iain Foster, director of Diabetes UK Northern Ireland, said that around 80% of people with the condition die of cardiovascular disease including strokes and heart attacks. There are currently around 60,000 diabetes patients in Northern Ireland.
“The most effective way to prevent the complications of diabetes is early diagnoses and effective self management supported by patient education,” he said.
“If people with diabetes are taking aspirin to prevent heart disease, Diabetes UK would certainly not recommend they stop doing so without consulting their GP or diabetes care team for advice.
“Our care recommendations for aspirin treatment in diabetes do not advocate everyone to take aspirin. But there is evidence that aspirin is effective in the secondary prevention of cardiovascular events in patients with existing arterial disease. There is a need for more long term research in this area.”
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The whole study is confusing as it admits that Aspirin helps those with cardiovascular diseases but likes to say that it does not help diabetics without cardiovascular disease.It would be useful ask how many diabetics of a few years duration over the age of 45 years are likely to have cardiovascular diseases. The answer would make it very obvious that most of these would benefit from prophylactic protective role of Aspirin.
Posted by Vinod | 20.10.08, 01:02 GMT
'There is a need for more long term research in this area'. Such comments frustrate medical researchers. As the accompanying editorial to this article pointed out, 'A total of seven well controlled trials now show that aspirin has no benefit for primary prevention of cardiovascular events, even in people at higher risk. Although aspirin is cheap and universally available, practitioners and authors of guidelines need to heed the evidence that aspirin should be prescribed only in patients with established symptomatic cardiovascular disease. ' [ BMJ 2008;337:a1806 ]
How much more research do you need? If you treat the risk factors like diabetes and high cholesterol well, then fatty narrowings in arteries will not happen. Hence, aspirin will not help, as you can not have a heart attack if you do not have a fatty narrowing.
Posted by Dr Zaman | 18.10.08, 12:26 GMT
I have been recently diagnosed with type2 diabetes and one thing that surprised me is that there is relatively never a definitive method of treatment. My medication has been changed numerous times in the last 18 months, as well as the dose of that medication. To learn that my prescribed aspirin is now in question is really just par for the course!
Posted by StephenM | 18.10.08, 11:09 GMT