Regular intake of aspirin for more than a year may cause the development of Crohn’s disease, researchers warned during the Digestive Disease Week conference in New Orleans, reports the Eurekalert website.
Crohn’s disease is a chronic, non-specific inflammatory process of the gastrointestinal wall. It can affect any of its sections, but most often it is located in the final part of the small intestine and the initial part of the large intestine.
There are many causes of the disease, but preliminary studies on gastrointestinal tissue specimens have suggested that aspirin may damage the intestinal walls. To test the association of long-term aspirin intake with disease risk, Dr. Andrew Hart of the University of East Anglia School of Medicine and his team studied the medical history of 200 volunteers (aged 37 to 74) from the UK, Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Italy .
The project participants were healthy at the beginning of the study, and after a few years some of them developed Crohn’s disease. The researchers found that taking aspirin for a year or more fivefold the risk of developing Crohn’s disease, but did not affect the risk of developing ulcerative colitis.
As Dr. Hart explains, these are preliminary data so far, but it seems that aspirin is one of the many factors that may affect the risk of developing Crohn’s disease.
At the same time, the author adds that aspirin has many advantages – including helping to prevent heart attacks and other heart diseases. Therefore, scientists do not urge the use of this drug, as the risk of developing Crohn’s disease in patients who take aspirin for a long time despite their height remains relatively low – only one in 2 people gets sick.
Researchers plan to conduct further detailed studies of the association of aspirin use with Crohn’s disease, as well as other potential risk factors, including diet. (PAP)