They’ve been prescribed by doctors for years to reduce risks of first or second heart attack in patients with cardiovascular disease, but a new study is raising concerns that low-dose, coated aspirin might not be as potent as once thought."At low doses of 75 milligrams, a significant percentage of people are not receiving sufficient aspirin” to lower their cardiac risk, study lead author Dermot Cox, a pharmacologist at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin, Ireland, said in a statement.In fact, his team found that a normal-weight adult had a 20 percent chance of receiving inadequate cardiac protection from the coated pills, with that number rising even higher among overweight and obese patients.The findings were reported Thursday at the American Heart Association’s annual conference on Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, held in San Francisco.
