Conflicting views on how to take aspirin and ibuprofen
Advil products now reaching the shelf already carry a warning tracking the new safety alert: Anyone taking aspirin to prevent heart attack or stroke should check with a doctor or pharmacist before using Advil "because ibuprofen may decrease this benefit of aspirin."
The final word on any tendency of ibuprofen or other NSAIDs to muck up aspirin's ability to stave off heart attack and stroke may come in 2010, when a clinical trial called PRECISION is scheduled to bear fruit. Overseen by Nissen, the trial will involve some 21,000 osteoarthritis patients in U.S. and other medical centers who will be divided into three groups, each taking a different NSAID. Each group will be further split between patients who are and are not given aspirin. And even though no current data, to Nissen's mind, proves an aspirin-ibuprofen interconnection, patients in the ibuprofen group will be instructed to wait two hours to take the drug after their aspirin dose. "It doesn't hurt," he concedes.
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