A daily aspirin protects healthy older adults from heart disease.
Verdict: refuted
In healthy elderly people it did not extend life and raised the risk of serious bleeding.
What the evidence shows
Aspirin thins the blood and clearly helps people who have already had a heart attack or stroke (secondary prevention). The popular extension is that healthy older adults should take it too, to prevent a first event.
The large randomized ASPREE trial (McNeil et al., 2018) tested this in over 19,000 healthy people aged 70+. Daily low-dose aspirin did not reduce cardiovascular events enough to matter, did not prolong disability-free survival, and significantly increased major bleeding. Guidelines have since pulled back from recommending routine aspirin for primary prevention in older adults. For people without established heart disease, the daily-aspirin claim is refuted — the bleeding risk outweighs the benefit. (This is not medical advice; those already prescribed aspirin should not stop without consulting a doctor.)
Sources
McNeil, J. J., Woods, R. L., Nelson, M. R., et al. (2018). Effect of aspirin on disability-free survival in the healthy elderly (ASPREE).
New England Journal of Medicine, 379(16), 1499–1508
In healthy people 70+, daily aspirin did not prolong disability-free survival and increased major haemorrhage.
DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1800722 →