Aspirin cuts CV mortality by 25% in women.(News)

DALLAS -- Daily aspirin therapy in postmenopausal women with stable cardiovascular disease was associated with a 25% reduction in the risk of cardiovascular mortality in the Women's Health Initiative Observational Study.

That's the good news.

The bad news? Aspirin was being used by fewer than half of the nearly 9,000 women in the study in whom this safe and inexpensive therapy was indicated for secondary cardiovascular prevention, Jeffrey S. Berger, M.D., reported at the annual scientific sessions of the American Heart Association.

That's a rate far lower than is typical in men with established cardiovascular disease. Indeed, only 46% of the 8,928 postmenopausal women with stable cardiovascular disease in the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) Observational Study were on aspirin. Ideally, that figure ought to be in excess of 90%, since studies indicate that only 5% or fewer of aspirin candidates have medical contraindications to the drug, observed Dr. Berger, a cardiology fellow at Duke University, Durham, N.C.

While today aspirin is well recognized as a key element in secondary prevention, it's not widely appreciated that many of the landmark studies that ...