Aspirin habits unchanged by recommendations from US doctors

U.S. guidelines urging more adults who never had a heart attack or stroke to take a daily aspirin may not have convinced people to take these pills, a recent study suggests.

In 2009, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), a government-backed panel of independent physicians, advised men ages 45 to 79 and women ages 55 to 79 to take aspirin to prevent heart attack and stroke as long as they didn’t have bleeding disorders that might make the drug unsafe.

To see whether people in that age range took the advice, researchers examined data from 2007 to 2015 on aspirin use for almost 89,000 men and women who didn’t have bleeding disorders or other medical reasons to avoid this drug. Overall, only 43 percent of these adults took aspirin during the study period.

Even after researchers looked at how many risk factors people had for cardiovascular disease – such as high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol and smoking – the 2009 recommendations didn’t appear to boost aspirin use, researchers report in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

After 2009, aspirin use declined from 45 percent to 40 percent among people at low risk for heart attacks and strokes; from 66 percent to 62 percent among people at medium risk; and from 76 percent to 73 percent among high-risk individuals.