A new study finds that low-dose aspirin can help protect the lungs and reduce patients’ need to be placed on ventilators.
According to WHDH, a team at George Washington University found in a new study that over-the-counter pills can lower the number of patients going to the ICU and reduce death risk in patients. The study has been published in the journal Anesthesia & Analgesia.
“The reason why we started looking at aspirin and Covid is because in the spring we all realized that all these patients started to have a lot of thrombotic complications or a lot of blood clots that have formed throughout their bodies,” Dr. Jonathan Chow, assistant professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine at the George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences, told CNN.
“That is why we thought that using an antiplatelet agent, or a blood thinner, like aspirin, might be helpful in COVID-19,” Chow said.
The study includes records of 412 patients admitted to several hospitals in the U.S. between March and July 2020, WHDH reports. In less than 24 hours after being accepted into a hospital, about 24 percent received aspirin. The outlet reports that 76 percent didn’t receive aspirin. The drug was connected to a 44 percent reduction in mechanical ventilation, a 43 percent reduction in ICU admission, and in-hospital mortality saw a drop by 47 percent.
Another study shows more than 30,000 U.S. veterans with COVID-19 who take aspirin daily have cut their risk of dying by half than those who are not prescribed daily pills.
