Feb. 5, 2025 – Taking a daily aspirin? It could be worth asking yourself why, and if it’s still the best choice for you.
That’s because it’s been five years since recommendations began changing about who should take the tiny little pill to prevent heart problems, and new data shows that 48% of adults still mistakenly believe the benefits of taking a low-dose aspirin every day to reduce the chance of a heart attack or stroke outweigh the risks.
That’s no longer recommended for everyone. In 2019, the American College of Cardiology warned of bleeding risks – particularly in the gut – from using low-dose aspirin preventively, and in 2022, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force followed suit.
The task force now says people ages 60 and older shouldn’t take it for prevention, and people ages 40 to 59 may consider doing so if they have a 10% or greater risk of having a disease of their heart or blood vessels within the next 10 years.
About 18% of people – which is nearly 1 in 5 – say they take preventive low-dose aspirin even though they have never had a heart attack or stroke and don’t have a family history. Among them, a little over half said they take aspirin “basically every day,” and the remainder took it a few times a week or a few times a month, according to the survey results published by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
Among people ages 60 and older with no personal or family history of a heart attack or stroke, 22% said they take daily low-dose aspirin.
People may be taking low-dose aspirin because they heard about it long ago and began using it on their own, or because it was recommended before the guidelines changed and they haven’t had an updated conversation about it with their health care provider.
“Habits backed by conventional wisdom and the past advice of health care providers are hard to break,” Kathleen Hall Jamieson, PhD, director of the survey project, said in a news release. “Knowing whether taking a low-dose aspirin daily is advisable or not for you is vital health information.”
A doctor may still recommend low-dose aspirin to thin the blood in some people who have specific risk factors, particularly if they’ve previously had a heart attack or stroke and don’t have a higher bleeding risk.
It’s not entirely surprising that the change in recommendations is taking so long to become well understood by the general public. Even in the medical field, research shows that it takes an average of 17 years for 14% of new scientific discoveries to enter clinical practice.
People can work with their health care provider to estimate their risk of serious heart problems and make a prevention plan. Online risk calculators are also available, and they typically involve entering demographic information like your age and entering some health metrics like blood pressure and cholesterol levels.
