Keith Souter graduated in Medicine from the University of Dundee in 1976 and worked as a family doctor in Wakefield for almost thirty years. The practice contributed statistics to the Royal College of General Practitioners Weekly Returns Service and was part of the MRC General Practice Research Framework. As such he was involved in several national trials, including one of the major studies on aspirin. Keith has been a medical columnist for twenty-eight years and is a medical journalist, although he still practices medicine. He is a prolific author and has written over twenty books, including eleven novels and several health books including Doctors’ Latin, Coping with Rheumatism and Arthritis, 50 Things That You Can Do To Manage Back Pain, and Now You’re Talking.

An Aspirin a Day

The Wonder Drug that Could Save Your Life

By Keith Souter, David Woodroffe

Michael O’Mara Books Limited

Copyright © 2011 Michael O’Mara Books Limited
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84317-632-9

Contents

Author’s Acknowledgements,
Foreword by Professor Tom Meade FRS,
A Note on How to Use This Book,
Introduction,
1 Aspirin: The Highlights,
2 Aspirin: The Wonder Drug?,
3 The History of Aspirin,
4 How Aspirin Works,
5 Pain, Fever and Inflammation,
6 The Heart and Circulation,
7 Strokes,
8 Arteries, Veins and Aspirin in Pregnancy,
9 Aspirin and Dementia,
10 Cancer: A Short Overview,
11 Colorectal Cancer,
12 Cancer of the Lung,
13 Breast Cancer,
14 Cancer of the Prostate,
15 Aspirin in Diabetes,
16 Depression,
17 The Skin,
18 Unusual Uses of Aspirin,
19 Aspirin: Side Effects and Precautions,
Conclusion: Aspirin Reflections,
Glossary of Terms,
References,
Index,
Footnotes,

CHAPTER 1

ASPIRIN: THE HIGHLIGHTS

This book, in its entirety, offers a comprehensive and detailed analysis of aspirin, describing how it could help you with a range of medical conditions and providing an in-depth examination of the many ground-breaking studies into aspirin’s role as a preventative drug.

However, this chapter simply presents the stark highlights of the drug’s impact, so you can see – at a glance – the extraordinary results for yourself.

Aspirin: the results

Aspirin has been proven to help with a range of medical conditions, including, but not limited to, heart attacks, strokes, cancer and dementia. Some of the results are quite astounding – and so here are the highlights. Scientific studies have drawn the following key conclusions.

Heart attacks and strokes

• Aspirin is proven to help people who have already had a heart attack. In such patients, taking a low dose aspirin on a daily basis reduces the risk of having another heart attack or a stroke by at least one third.

• Aspirin has also been shown to be effective at reducing the risk of a first heart attack in those patients at high risk of having a heart attack or stroke. Some studies reduced the risk of such events by as much as 44 per cent.

• When treating a heart attack, the death rate was reduced by 42 per cent in patients who received a dual treatment of aspirin and streptokinase.

• If a patient has suffered a non-haemorrhagic stroke, the Royal College of Physicians recommends patients should be prescribed 50–300mg of aspirin daily indefinitely, as a preventative measure against further events.

• Patients who have had a mini-stroke should take aspirin. Studies have shown that taking aspirin reduces the odds of suffering another stroke by 15 per cent.

• According to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) recommendations, patients with the commonest type of irregular heartbeat, called atrial fibrillation, who are classified at low or moderate risk of a stroke, should be given aspirin in a daily dose of 75–300mg in order to prevent strokes and heart attacks.

Cancer

• A small daily dose of aspirin has been proven to reduce the overall cancer death rate by at least one fifth.

• Aspirin needs to be taken for at least 5 years before an effect is seen in a reduction of the risk of cancer. After 5 years of takin