Thanks for the responses.
boytos mentioned pain in his first post and mrsD mentioned taking a regular dose for relief of flare ups. That's not what I was trying to get at in my original post:
I was thinking about the approach of regularly taking baby aspirin. People already do this today, primarily for prevention of heart problems. It also appears to be useful for prevention of cancer. It has anti-inflammatory properties which are generally of benefit to TOS patients.
So does it make sense for TOS patients to take this anti-inflammatory proactively and regularly, at a low dose?
Re: safety, "more than 50 million US adults take aspirin regularly for long-term prevention of cardiovascular disease" (
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article....ticleid=206954). As previous links show, it's not perfectly safe and the safety even varies according to various factors. But I'm doubtful that baby aspirin is problematic in a big way.
Also of interest is that an even lower dose may be possible. From the same article:
Quote:
Long-term Therapy. Due to its irreversible inactivation of platelet COX-1 and presumably minimal de novo synthesis of new COX-1 by platelets, the effects of long-term aspirin dosing are cumulative. Once complete inhibition of COX-1 is achieved, only minimal doses of aspirin are required to ensure adequate acetylation of COX-1 activity arising in newly formed platelets entering the circulation (approximately 10% daily). Because of this, dosages of as little as 30 mg/d have been shown to completely inhibit serum TXB2 production in healthy individuals.8 In patients with chronic stable angina, in whom thromboxane synthesis is chronically elevated, 50 mg/d of aspirin normalizes thromboxane production and prevents release in the setting of pacing-induced ischemia.24- 25 Limited pharmacodynamic data also suggest that 100 mg of aspirin every other day is also effective at suppressing platelet function.26
Enteric-coated products are also routinely used in the setting of long-term aspirin therapy. However, questions have arisen regarding the effect of enteric coating on the bioavailability and biological activity of aspirin. There is conflicting evidence regarding the effectiveness of routinely administered enteric-coated products, even among trials with similar designs. In a study comparing 3 different enteric preparations with uncoated aspirin, it was noted that despite high levels (>96%) of TXB2 suppression by all preparations, the uncoated form led to a significantly higher level of inhibition.27
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So I think you could cut the baby aspirin in half. Maybe after taking the regular dose for a period of time. They don't say how long it takes before "complete inhibition of COX-1 is achieved".
Again this is the question I'm interested in:
Does it make sense for TOS patients to take this anti-inflammatory proactively and regularly, at a low dose?
Re: other anti-inflammatories do they come in "baby doses"? Has their long term use been studied?