Aspirin and asthma

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An American study shows that use of the drug aspirin may prevent healthy adults from developing the disease asthma. Asthma is caused by a condition in the lungs. During an asthma attack, breathing passages become smaller, blocking the flow of air. The disease usually develops during childhood. Some children recover as they get older.

Tobias Kurth led the new study. He works for Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. His team studied information about twenty-two thousand male doctors. The doctors had taken part in a health study during the nineteen eighties. That study was about heart disease, but its records also had information about asthma.

None of the doctors had asthma when the study began. Half of them took an aspirin every other day. The other half took a harmless substance called a placebo.

After about five years, one hundred forty-five men in the placebo group had developed asthma. But only one hundred thirteen men in the aspirin group had the disease. This represented a twenty-two percent decrease in the risk of developing asthma for those taking aspirin.

The research team reported the results last month in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

The researchers say it is too early to suggest that people take aspirin to prevent asthma. They also say aspirin is not a treatment for asthma. The drug can cause asthma attacks in some people who have the disease.


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