Aspirin is particularly attractive because it is one of the most widely available over-the-counter medications. Its cost, at just a few cents per dose, is minuscule compared to other commonly used anti-Covid drugs, such as remdesivir, which can cost thousands of dollars in a typical treatment.
Aspirin can help prevent blood clots from forming, which is why people who have had a heart attack are often advised to take baby aspirin every day.
“The reason we started looking at aspirin and Covid is because in the spring we all realized that all of these patients started having a lot of thrombotic complications, or a lot of blood clots that formed in their bodies,” Dr. Jonathan Chow, assistant professor of anesthesiology and intensive care at the George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences, he told CNN.
“That’s why we think that using an antiplatelet agent, or a blood thinner, like aspirin, can be useful in COVID-19,” said Chow.
The team examined the records of 412 patients admitted to various U.S. hospitals between March and July 2020. About 24% of patients received aspirin within 24 hours of hospital admission or in the seven days prior to hospital admission. But the majority, 76%, did not receive the drug. Aspirin use was associated with a 44% reduction in mechanical ventilation, a 43% reduction in ICU admission and a 47% reduction in hospital mortality, the researchers found.
Other studies have made similar findings. A study, published in the journal PLOS One, looked at more than 30,000 U.S. veterans with Covid-19 and found that those who were already taking aspirin had half the risk of dying than those who did not receive the daily pills.
Chow warned that a limitation of his team’s new study was that he looked at medical records and did not randomly assign patients to take aspirin or a placebo.