Aspirin use may prevent asthma, study finds

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People who take aspirin regularly can reduce their risk of asthma, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.

They found women who took a small dose of aspirin -- 100 mg every other day -- were 10 percent less likely to develop asthma over 10 years than women given placebos.

Writing in the journal Thorax, the researchers said their findings reinforce studies that show men who took aspirin daily were less likely to develop asthma, too.

"Although aspirin can worsen symptoms in some patients with asthma, our biologically plausible finding long with similar results from a large randomized trial in men and observational cohort studies in women suggests a small benefit of aspirin for the prevention of the development of asthma in adults," wrote Dr. Tobias Kurth and colleagues of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston.

"However, before public recommendations are provided, results from randomized trials are needed that are specifically designed to test whether low-dose aspirin reduces the risk of asthma," they added.

Kurth's team studied 37,000 female healthcare professionals taking part in a study called the Women's Health Study. All were aged 45 and above, and had no serious illness, allergy or asthma at the start of the study.

They were randomly assigned to take 100 mg of aspirin every other day, or a dummy tablet.

Among the women who got real aspirin, 872 developed asthma over the 10 years, compared to 963 taking the placebo.

Women who were obese, with a body mass index of 30 or above, got no benefit from aspirin, they noted.