Thirty-nine thousand eight hundred seventy-six healthy female health professionals aged 45 years or older.
Intervention
Participants were assigned randomly to receive either 100 mg aspirin on alternate days or placebo and were followed up for the presence of AMD for an average of 10 years.
Main Outcome Measures
Incident AMD responsible for a reduction in best-corrected visual acuity to 20/30 or worse based on self-report confirmed by medical record review.
Results
After 10 years of treatment and follow-up, there were 111 cases of AMD in the aspirin group and 134 cases in the placebo group (hazard ratio, 0.82; 95% confidence interval, 0.64–1.06).
Conclusions
In a large-scale randomized trial of female health professionals with 10 years of treatment and follow-up, low-dose aspirin had no large beneficial or harmful effect on risk of AMD.
Financial Disclosure(s)
The author(s) have no proprietary or commercial interest in any materials discussed in this article.
1Division of Preventive Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts
2Department of Biostatistics, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts
4Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts
Correspondence: William G. Christen, ScD, 900 Commonwealth Avenue East, Boston, MA 02215-1204
Available online: October 7, 2009.
Manuscript no. 2008-1509.
Financial Disclosure(s): The author(s) have no proprietary or commercial interest in any materials discussed in this article.
Supported by the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland (grant nos.: CA47988, HL43851, and EY06633). Pills and packaging were provided by Bayer Healthcare and the Natural Source Vitamin E Association.
ABSTRACT