Aspirin can reduce the risk of myocardial infarction and stroke in patients with pneumonia, a new study reveals today.
Research to be presented at the online European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) shows the commonly used drug may have a future clinical role in preventing cardiovascular events.
Dr Fergus Hamilton and colleagues at the University of Bristol, UK, used the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD), a large UK primary care database of more than 61 million patients, to analyse the data from patients aged 50 and over who had pneumonia.
Of the 48,743 patients who were included in the analysis, the researchers found 8099 aspirin users who were matched to 8099 non-users also selected from the sample group.
The authors found that the risk of the primary outcome – stroke and myocardial infarction (MI) – was 36% lower in aspirin users compared to non-users.
Aspirin was also associated with a reduced risk of both secondary outcomes with ischemic stroke and MI rates being 30% and 54% lower, respectively.
Dr Hamilton, Wellcome doctoral fellow at the University of Bristol, said: “This research really paves the foundation for a clinical trial of aspirin in pneumonia, which remains the most common reason for admission to hospital in many countries.”
A full paper was published recently in the European Respiratory Journal.
Hamilton F, Arnold D, Henley W et al. Aspirin reduces cardiovascular events in patients with pneumonia: a prior event rate ratio analysis in a large primary care database. European Respiratory Journal 17 September 2020
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