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Aspirin may help prevent the onset of asthma in adult men.
(Joe Kohen / Bloomberg News)
By Melissa Healy, Times Staff Writer
January 22, 2007
 IT'S
been almost two decades since the discovery that aspirin could
help prevent heart attacks and strokes when taken regularly. Now
a study suggests the analgesic pill may also help prevent the
development of asthma in adults.
The study, published in the Jan. 15 issue of the American
Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, found that
among a large group of healthy men age 40 to 84, those taking a
single aspirin (325 milligrams) every other day were 22% less
likely to develop asthma than those who did not.
The findings drew upon data collected from male physicians in
the United States between 1982 and 1988. Of the 22,071 who
participated in this trial, 258 reported in the almost five-year
study period that they had developed asthma. Among the half who
had taken aspirin, 113 became asthmatic. Among those who took a
sugar-pill instead of aspirin, 145 developed the disease.
The study's lead author, Tobias Kurth of Harvard University's
Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, said that when it comes
to asthma, there were many possible explanations for the
apparently protective effects of aspirin. One possibility, he
said, is that aspirin's anti-inflammatory effects may help
suppress the development of asthma's inflamed airways. However,
genetic inheritance and environmental exposures also play a key
role in asthma development, he cautioned, and aspirin alone is
unlikely to trump such powerful factors.
melissa.healy@latimes.com |
