Adapted from Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Jae Hee Kang, ScD, from the Channing Laboratory at Brigham and Women's Hospital and colleagues from the Department of Preventative Medicine observed no benefit of low-dose aspirin in slowing cognitive decline in generally healthy women aged 65 years or more. This study is published in the British Medical Journal.
Identifying ways to prevent dementia is a public health priority. "Recent studies have supported the notion that what's good for the heart may also be good for the brain," said Kang. "Because aspirin reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease, the drug seemed promising as an intervention for maintaining cognitive health."
In this study, over 6,000 women were randomly divided into two groups. Over a period of nearly 10 years, the first group took low-dose aspirin (100 milligrams on alternate days) and the second group took a placebo. Each woman had three cognitive assessments at two year intervals to measure general cognition, verbal memory and category fluency. The researchers found that overall performance across all tests from the first to the final assessment was similar in both groups as was the risk of substantial cognitive decline.
Based on their research, Kang and colleagues recommend investigating other methods of preserving cognitive function in older adults.