Low-dose aspirin found to increase risk of intracranial hemorrhage

Taking aspirin could potentially increase the risk of intracranial hemorrhage, even among people without symptomatic cardiovascular disease. The finding was part of a review made by an international team of researchers from China and the U.S., and was published in JAMA Neurology.

• For the review, the team investigated the link between low-dose aspirin use and intracranial hemorrhage risk.
• The team utilized the following data sources: PubMed, Embase, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, and ClinicalTrials.gov. Relevant studies from January 1966 to October 30, 2018 were included in the review.
• In particular, the team looked at randomized clinical trials that compared low-dose aspirin with a control and recorded the endpoints of intracranial hemorrhage separately for the two groups.
• Using the Mantel-Haenszel method, the team computed a random-effect estimate for each study. They used a 95-percent confidence interval for relative risk as a measure of aspirin vs control on risk of intracranial hemorrhage.
• They included studies that provided outcomes for aspirin versus control in terms of risk for intracranial, subdural or extradural, intracerebral and subarachnoid hemorrhages.
• Thirteen clinical trials — a total of 134,446 patients — were included in the meta-analysis. Based on data from the random-effect estimate, low-dose aspirin was linked to an increased risk of any intracranial bleeding.
• The greatest relative risk increase that the researchers identified was for subdural or extradural hemorrhage.

In sum, low-dose aspirin was linked to an overall increased risk of intracranial hemorrhages.

Medicine.news has more studies on the adverse effects of aspirin.

Journal Reference:

Huang WY, Saver JL, Wu YL, Lin CJ, Lee M, Ovbiagele B. FREQUENCY OF INTRACRANIAL HEMORRHAGE WITH LOW-DOSE ASPIRIN IN INDIVIDUALS WITHOUT SYMPTOMATIC CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE. JAMA Neurology. 2019;76(8):906. DOI: 10.1001/jamaneurol.2019.1120