Asthma is a respiratory disease caused by chronic inflammation of the airways. Approximately 300 million people globally and 20 million Americans have asthma. Now research reports that low dose aspirin every other day may reduce the risk of adult-onset asthma.
The randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study, published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, investigated whether low dose aspirin is associated with a decreased risk of newly diagnosed asthma. Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, analyzed the data of 22,071 healthy male physicians ages 40 to 84 years participating in the Physicians Health Study. The participants were administered 325 mg of aspirin or a placebo on alternate days for 4.9 years. Questionnaires obtained from the participants at the beginning of the study, at six months, then annually thereafter were analyzed for self-reported asthma diagnoses.
The researchers found that there was a 22 percent lower risk of developing asthma among the participants who received aspirin. This risk was not changed by smoking status, body mass index, or age. Furthermore, there were 113 participants who developed asthma in the aspirin group and 145 participants who developed asthma in the placebo group.
"Aspirin reduced the risk of newly diagnosed adult-onset asthma in a large, randomized clinical trial of apparently healthy, aspirin-tolerant men," the study authors write. "This result requires replication in randomized trials designed a priori to test this hypothesis; it does not imply that aspirin improves symptoms in patients with asthma."
REFERENCES:
1. Barr RG et al. Aspirin and decreased adult-onset asthma: randomized comparisons from the physicians' health study. Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2007 Jan 15;175(2):120-5. Epub 2006 Oct 26.
Posted by Elaine Gavalas on February 13, 2007 02:57 PM
