Many people regularly take aspirin to relieve pain or headaches. However, in the long term, this over-the-counter medication can have significant side effects, a study has just shown.
Anemia tires you out and leaves you flat. Certain risk factors are well known, such as a lack of iron, vitamins B9 or B12, bleeding periods or even inflammatory diseases. Others less so such as medications. This is what the medical journal Prescrire points out in April, specifically targeting one treatment. According to the authors, “including low doses” this one “exposes you to bleeding which may go unnoticed with a progressive drop in hemoglobinemia”.
A study Australian published in June 2023 demonstrated this side effect. Carried out on 18,153 people aged 65 or over, living in Australia or the United States, it consisted of administering either this drug or a placebo to prevent cardiovascular risk. The protocol included measuring hemoglobinemia every year and measuring ferritinemia (to look for anemia linked to iron deficiency) at the start of the study and three years later.
Result: the annual incidence of anemia was 5.1% in the aspirin group (the drug singled out here) compared to 4.3% in the placebo group. Bleeding was more frequent in the aspirin group (3%) than in the placebo group (2.1%). And a drop in iron levels of around 11.5% was recorded during the third year in patients on aspirin. For the authors, elderly people who take low-dose aspirin daily have a 20% higher risk of developing anemia.
“We knew from large clinical trials that daily low-dose aspirin increased the risk of clinically significant bleeding. Our study found that it also increased the risk of anemia during the trial, which was probably due to bleeding that was not clinically apparent.” commented Dr. Zoe McQuilten, hematologist and lead author of the study to the site Medscape. For the Prescrire magazine“it is justified to measure hemoglobinemia every 3 to 5 years in patients taking low-dose aspirin, and ferritinemia in cases of anemia or high risk of iron deficiency, e.g. by default food intake”.