Aspirin therapy may need reinforcement - Brief Article

AORN Journal, Feb, 2004

Patients using aspirin therapy to prevent heart attacks may need additional treatment to help prevent blood clots, according to a Nov 10, 2003, news release from 3ohns Hopkins Medicine, Baltimore. Researchers took blood samples from 33 patients who had been hospitalized with chest pains. Eighteen of the patients had acute coronary syndrome (ie, heart disease-related chest pain), and 15 had noncardiac chest pain. All of the patients were taking doses of aspirin between 8:1 mg and 325 mg per day.

The blood samples were treated with low doses of adenosine diphosphate and epinephrine, medications that allow platelets to clump together. The platelets of those patients with heart disease clumped together 5% to 10% more than the platelets of patients without heart disease. The more the platelets dump together, the higher chance a person has of a clot forming, leading to a heart attack. The researchers plan to investigate other anticlotting therapies that might be used in addition to aspirin therapy and to study abnormal genes that may affect platelet function.

Aspirin May Not Be Strong Enough to Prevent Clots in Some Heart Patients (news release, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Medicine, Nov 10, 2003) http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press_releases/2003/11_10_03b.html (accessed 11 Nov 2003).