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Another landmark for the world's wonder drug 15.03.2004 Aspirin has reached another landmark. The Women's Health Study, the first large study of aspirin in preventing heart attacks and cancer in women, ends this month. Lead investigator Julie Buring, Professor of Ambulatory Care and Prevention at Boston's Harvard Medical School, believes the Women's Health Study will do for healthy women what the Physician's Health Study did for men in the 1990s. This influential study showed that aspirin reduced the risk of heart attack in previously healthy men by 44 percent. The Study's director, Harvard Medical School's Dr Charles Hennekens, has called aspirin "the wonder drug of the 20th century and, possibly, the wonder drug of the 21st century".But the risk of cardiovascular disease is different for women: until the age of 60, their risk is 1 in 17 compared with 1 in 5 for men. After that, the risk is 1 in 4 for both sexes and coronary heart disease is the primary cause of death for women. The Women's Health Study, a placebo-controlled 10-year study involving 40,000 women aged 45 or older, will show whether low-dose aspirin reduces heart attacks and cancer in women. Professor Buring says the women will stop taking their drugs at the end of March, and she anticipates the preliminary analyses will be ready at the end of 2004 or beginning of 2005. The Women's Health Study will also use CAT scans to measure the effects of aspirin on the atherosclerotic plaques that cause furring of arteries and increase heart attack risk; this should provide more information about who can benefit most from taking aspirin. Another part of the study will determine the effects of vitamin E on the risk of heart attack and cancer. Notes for editors
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