John McNeil discusses publicity of aspirin studies with the Australian Ageing Agenda
ASPREE Principal Investigator, Professor John McNeil spoke to the Australian Ageing Agenda about the ASPREE study and the mixed messages about aspirin in the media.
“..because aspirin is the most widely used drug in the world, there was a lot of media reporting of research related to a wide range of different effects associated with it,” said Prof McNeil.
“In the last three or four years, there has been so much more,” he said. “Some of the stories about its effects are bad and some are good. It’s about fifty-fifty.”
He added that the recent publicity around a study that showed a link with increased likelihood of macular degeneration made things worse. “What the publicity didn’t say was that there are equal numbers of good studies that say that aspirin improves it (AMD). Some studies say it improves macular degeneration and some say it makes it worse.
Prof McNeil wrote to all to participants to provide context to the publicity about the AMD study – that this was just one of a number of aspirin studies.
“And most of that research is drawn from observational data, a very second rate research method compared with ASPREE,” he added.
The ASPREE-AMD sub-study is examining the effect of aspirin on age-related macular degeneration in participants randomly assigned 100 mg aspirin or a matched placebo. It is one of several ASPREE sub-studies underway.
Read the full article here: The Big Picture on Aspirin. AAA 2013 Feb 15
We would like to thank the Australian Ageing Agenda for permission to publish this article on our website.