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Stopping Aspirin Intake Raises Risks of Heart Attack

Doctors commonly prescribe daily low-dose aspirin after a heart attack to reduce the risk of having a second cardiovascular event. (Reuters)
Doctors commonly prescribe daily low-dose aspirin after a heart attack to reduce the risk of having a second cardiovascular event. (Reuters)
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Stopping Aspirin Intake Raises Risks of Heart Attack

Doctors commonly prescribe daily low-dose aspirin after a heart attack to reduce the risk of having a second cardiovascular event. (Reuters)
Doctors commonly prescribe daily low-dose aspirin after a heart attack to reduce the risk of having a second cardiovascular event. (Reuters)

Doctors commonly prescribe daily low-dose aspirin after a heart attack to reduce the risk of having a second cardiovascular event.

About one in six patients however stop taking their aspirin within three years, a Swedish study found. It warned against stopping the low dose of aspirin, because it raises the risk of heart attack or stroke by nearly 40 percent.

Lead author of the study Dr. Johan Sundstrom told Reuters Health that low-dose aspirin makes the platelets in the blood less likely to form clots. This is especially useful in the coronary or carotid arteries, where blood clots may lead to myocardial infarctions and strokes.

Sundstrom, an epidemiologist at Uppsala University added that millions of patients worldwide take aspirin on a daily basis and might consider stopping at some time during their life.

“We performed this study to help physicians and patients to make an informed decision whether or not to stop aspirin use,” he explained.

To see if risk rises after a patient stops aspirin therapy, Sundstrom’s team used nationwide medical and death registries to identify patients over age 40 taking low-dose aspirin. In Sweden, low-dose aspirin is available only by prescription, so the researchers were also able to see who continued filling their prescriptions between 2005 and 2009.

The researchers analyzed records for 601,527 patients, who were cancer-free and had taken at least 80 percent of their prescribed aspirin doses during the first year of treatment. After excluding a small proportion of patients whose medical records showed a reason for stopping aspirin, such as surgery or a case of severe bleeding, they found that about 15 percent of the full group had stopped taking their aspirin after about three years.

At the end of the study period, there were a total of 62,690 cardiovascular events, defined as hospitalization for a heart attack or stroke, or cardiovascular death.

The study lead author said patients who discontinued aspirin had a 37 percent higher rate of cardiovascular events than those who continued. That translates to one extra cardiovascular event each year among every 74 patients who stopped taking aspirin.

The risk increased shortly after discontinuation, and did not appear to diminish over time, he added.

“Adherence to low-dose aspirin treatment in the absence of major surgery or bleeding is likely an important treatment goal,” stressed Sundstrom.

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Astronauts from India, Poland, Hungary Launched on 1st Space Station Mission

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Axiom-4 crew of four astronauts lifts off from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A on a mission to the International Space Station, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US, June 25, 2025. REUTERS/Steve Nesius
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Axiom-4 crew of four astronauts lifts off from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A on a mission to the International Space Station, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US, June 25, 2025. REUTERS/Steve Nesius
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Astronauts from India, Poland, Hungary Launched on 1st Space Station Mission

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Axiom-4 crew of four astronauts lifts off from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A on a mission to the International Space Station, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US, June 25, 2025. REUTERS/Steve Nesius
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Axiom-4 crew of four astronauts lifts off from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A on a mission to the International Space Station, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US, June 25, 2025. REUTERS/Steve Nesius

NASA retiree turned private astronaut Peggy Whitson was launched on the fifth flight to orbit of her career early on Wednesday, joined by crewmates from India, Poland and Hungary heading for their countries' first visit to the International Space Station.

The astronaut team lifted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, at about 2:30 a.m. EDT (0630 GMT), beginning the latest mission organized by Texas-based startup Axiom Space in partnership with Elon Musk's rocket venture SpaceX.

The four-member crew was carried aloft on a towering SpaceX launch vehicle consisting of a Crew Dragon capsule perched atop a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket.
Live video showed the towering spacecraft streaking into the night sky over Florida's Atlantic coast trailed by a brilliant yellowish plume of fiery exhaust.

Cameras inside the crew compartment beamed footage of the four astronauts strapped into their pressurized cabin, seated calmly side by side in helmeted white-and-black flight suits as their spacecraft soared toward space.

"We've had an incredible ride uphill," Whitson radioed back to the SpaceX mission control near Los Angeles as Falcon's upper stage delivered the crew capsule to its preliminary orbit about nine minutes after launch.

Dubbed "Grace" by the Axiom crew, the newly built Crew Dragon launched on Wednesday was making its debut flight as the fifth vehicle of its kind in the SpaceX capsule fleet.

It also marked the first Crew Dragon flight since Musk briefly threatened to decommission the spacecraft after US President Donald Trump threatened to cancel Musk's government contracts in a high-profile political feud earlier this month.

TWO-WEEKS IN ORBIT

Axiom 4's autonomously operated Crew Dragon was expected to reach the ISS after a flight of about 28 hours, then dock with the outpost as the two vehicles soar together in orbit some 250 miles (400 km) above Earth.

If all goes according to plan, the Axiom 4 crew will be welcomed aboard the orbiting space laboratory Thursday morning by its seven current resident occupants - three astronauts from the US, one from Japan and three cosmonauts from Russia, Reuters reported.

Whitson, 65, and her three Axiom 4 crewmates - Shubhanshu Shukla, 39, of India, Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski, 41, of Poland, and Tibor Kapu, 33, of Hungary - are slated to spend 14 days aboard the space station conducting microgravity research.

The mission stands as the fourth such flight since 2022 arranged by Axiom as the Houston-headquartered company builds on its business of putting astronauts sponsored by private companies and foreign governments into Earth orbit.

For India, Poland and Hungary, the launch marked a return to human spaceflight after more than 40 years and the first mission to send their astronauts to the International Space Station.

The Axiom 4 participation of Shukla, an Indian air force pilot, is seen by India's own space program as a kind of precursor to the debut crewed mission of its Gaganyaan orbital spacecraft, planned for 2027.

The Axiom 4 crew is led by Whitson, who retired from NASA in 2018 after a pioneering career that included becoming the US space agency's first female chief astronaut, and the first woman to command an ISS expedition.

Now a consultant and director of human spaceflight for Axiom, she has logged 675 days in space, a US record, during three NASA missions and a fourth flight to space as commander of the Axiom 2 mission in 2023.

Wednesday's blast-off marked SpaceX's 18th human spaceflight since Musk's privately funded rocket company ushered in a new era for NASA five years ago, providing American astronauts their first rides to space from US soil since the end of the space shuttle era in 2011.

Axiom, a nine-year-old venture co-founded by NASA's former ISS program manager, is one of a handful of companies developing a commercial space station of its own intended to eventually replace the ISS, which NASA expects to retire around 2030.

NASA, besides furnishing the launch site at Cape Canaveral, assumes responsibility for astronauts venturing to the space station once they rendezvous with the orbiting outpost.