Fresh evidence adds to suspicions that ibuprofen could be dangerous for most heart patients because it can block the blood-thinning benefits of aspirin.
New research published this week in The Lancet found that those taking both aspirin and ibuprofen were twice as likely to die during the study period as those who were taking aspirin alone or with other types of common pain relievers.
Scientists believe ibuprofen clogs a channel inside a clotting protein that aspirin acts on. Aspirin gets stuck behind the ibuprofen and cannot get to where it is supposed to go to thin the blood.
Aspirin is considered the most important medicine for heart disease.
Scientists at the medicines monitoring unit of Britain’s Medical Research Council checked the medical records of 7,107 heart patients who had been discharged from hospitals between 1989 and 1997 with aspirin prescriptions and had survived at least one month after leaving the hospital.
They were divided into four groups according to their prescriptions.
The first group included those on aspirin alone.
The second were given aspirin and ibuprofen and the third group had aspirin with another pain killer, diclofenac.
The last group included those taking aspirin with drugs such as acetaminophen, which is in Tyienol.
The researchers found that those taking ibuprofen were almost twice as likely as those taking aspirin alone to die by 1997.
AP