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Prevention

Aspirin in primary prevention needs individual judgements

Nature Reviews Cardiology volume 11, pages 438–440 (2014)Cite this article

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In May 2014, the FDA astutely stated that any decision to use aspirin should be an individual clinical judgement by health-care providers. Almost simultaneously, the MESA investigators formulated, but did not test, a hypothesis that coronary artery calcification scoring might aid health-care providers in making this judgement.

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Figure 1: Cardiovascular benefits and risks of aspirin versus placebo in primary and secondary prevention.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine, Florida Atlantic University, 777 Glades Road, Building 71, Suite 337, Boca Raton, 33431, FL, USA

    Charles H. Hennekens

  2. University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, 600 Highland Avenue, Madison, 53792, WI, USA

    David L. DeMets

Authors
  1. Charles H. Hennekens
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  2. David L. DeMets
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Charles H. Hennekens.

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Competing interests

C.H.H. declares that he serves as an independent scientist in an advisory role to investigators and sponsors as chairman or a member of Data and Safety Monitoring Boards for: Amgen, Bayer, British Heart Foundation, Cadila, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, FDA, Lilly, Genzyme, NIH, Pfizer, Sanofi, Sunovion, UpToDate, and the Wellcome Foundation; and to legal counsel for GlaxoSmithKline. He receives royalties for authorship or editorship of three textbooks and as co-inventor on patents for inflammatory markers and cardiovascular disease that are held by Brigham and Women's Hospital. He has an investment management relationship with the West-Bacon Group within SunTrust Investment Services, which has discretionary investment authority and does not own any common or preferred stock in any pharmaceutical or medical device company.

D.L.D. declares that he is partially supported by an NIH grant to the University of Wisconsin for the Clinical Translational Science Award for statistical consultation and collaboration and administrative leadership. He serves or has recently served as an independent biostatistician in an advisory role to investigators and sponsors often as a member of independent Data and Safety Monitoring Boards for: Actelion, Amgen, Astellas, AstraZeneca, Biotronik, Boehringer-Ingelheim, CVRx, the Duke Clinical Research Institute, Genentech, GlaxoSmithKline, Harvard Partner's, Merck, Millennium, Novartis, Pfizer, the Population Health Research Institute of McMaster University Roche, Sanofi Aventis, and Takeda. He receives royalties from publishers of the three textbooks that he has coauthored and edited; has tax-sheltered retirement accounts in mutual funds with Fidelity and Morgan Stanley; and has a small account of stock with Intel.

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Hennekens, C., DeMets, D. Aspirin in primary prevention needs individual judgements. Nat Rev Cardiol 11, 438–440 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrcardio.2014.88

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