Patients with heart disease were today urged to take their aspirin to keep their risks low.
The drug is often recommended for these patients to help avoid blood clots, but many stop taking it.
Dr Luis Garcia Rodriguez of the Spanish Centre for Pharmacoepidemiologic Research in Madrid, Spain, and colleagues looked at the risk of heart attack and death from heart disease in 39,513 UK patients with previous cardiovascular problems. All were aged 50 to 84 years and prescribed 75-300 mg/day of aspirin.
Over the next three years there were 876 non-fatal heart attacks and 346 deaths from heart disease.
Patients who had recently stopped taking aspirin had a 43 per cent raised risk of both outcomes combined, and a 63 per cent raised risk of non-fatal heart attack alone. But the risk of death from coronary heart disease alone was not significantly raised.
Results appear on the website of the British Medical Journal.
The authors state: "For every 1,000 patients, over a period of one year there were about four more cases of non-fatal myocardial infarction [heart attack] among patients who discontinued treatment with low dose aspirin compared with patients who continued treatment."
They recommend that efforts are made to encourage patients to continue on their treatment.
Writing in the journal Dr Giuseppe Biondi-Zoccai of the University of Modena, Italy, says: "Unless severe bleeding ensues or an informed colleague explicitly says so, aspirin should never be discontinued given its overwhelming benefits on atherothrombosis, as well as colorectal cancer and venous thromboembolism."
Ellen Mason of the British Heart Foundation commented: "This research is yet another reminder of how effective a little daily pill of aspirin can be at preventing someone from having another heart attack."
Garcia, L. A. et al. Discontinuation of low dose aspirin and risk of myocardial infarction: case-control study in UK primary care. The British Medical Journal, 2011;343:d409.
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