For Heart Patients, Chewable Aspirin is Best, New Study Says
Heart patients who take an aspirin a day to reduce the risk of blood clots appear to benefit more from using chewable tablets than from pills, a new study has found.
Researchers from the University of California, San Diego in La Jolla found that chewable aspirin is absorbed into the body faster than traditional aspirin pills that are either swallowed whole or chewed before swallowing. That allows the aspirin to reach the blood stream and start working faster, they said.
The new UCSD findings could change the way millions of heart attack patients are treated.
Study of Chewable Aspirin
For the study, researchers gave 13 men and one woman ages 20 to 61 one of three different types of aspirin. One study group got regular solid aspirin pills and swallowed the tablets whole. Another took regular tablets but chewed the pills before swallowing, and a third took chewable aspirin tablets that were swallowed as the patients chewed. The participants were given 1,950 milligrams of aspirin, which is equal to six regular aspirin tablets.
Scientists then studied the amount of aspirin in the blood of the patients and found that those who took chewable aspirin showed the fastest and greatest rates of aspirin absorption. While current guidelines call for the use of chewable aspirin for heart patients, there has not been much evidence showing that that method was in fact best.
Aspirin as Heart Attack Treatment
Aspirin is a common maintenance treatment for people at risk of heart attacks. Most heart patients are told to take a “baby” aspirin a day to reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke. Aspirin works quickly, generally within 15 minutes, to prevent blood clots from forming in patients with coronary artery disease.
While finding that chewable aspiring appears to work better than regular tablets that are either swallowed whole or chewed then swallowed, the researchers said when chewable tablets are not available, heart attack patients should still take the regular tablets for their dose.
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