Stopping aspirin abruptly risky for heart patientsNEW YORK (Reuters Health) — People with coronary artery disease who are taking aspirin to thin the blood and thereby lower their odds of having a heart attack run the risk of having a major adverse cardiac event if they stop taking aspirin, according to a new report.“Aspirin should not be discontinued even before surgery” in most cases, Dr. Giuseppe G. L. Biondi-Zoccai told Reuters Health, because the risk of excessive bleeding “is clearly overwhelmed” by the risk of developing a blood clot. The only exception might be intracranial surgery, and possibly prostate surgery.

Biondi-Zoccai from the University of Turin, Italy and colleagues reviewed six published studies to assess the hazards of discontinuing (or not adhering to) regular aspirin therapy for patients with or at risk for coronary artery disease.

In the pooled analysis, aspirin withdrawal or noncompliance was associated with a 3-fold increased risk of adverse events, the researchers report in the European Heart Journal.

On average, adverse events involving a blood clot occurred ten days after stopping aspirin, the report indicates.

These findings suggest that when aspirin must be stopped because of highly invasive operations or because patients are at very high risk of bleeding, “the drug should be resumed well before that eight to ten days have elapsed,” the researchers write.Ovulation disorders linked to lower breast cancer riskNEW YORK (Reuters Health) — The occurrence of breast cancer is lower among women who have had infertility problems because of an ovulation disorder than among women who have not had difficulty conceiving, according to findings from a study involving more than 116,000 women.Dr. Kathryn L. Terry of Harvard School of Public Health, Boston and colleagues evaluated data from the Nurses’ Health Study II, which enrolled female nurses aged 25 to 42 years at baseline.

Information on infertility and ovulation was assessed every two years starting in 1989, and cases of breast cancer were included through 2001.

During follow-up, 1357 cases of invasive breast cancer were diagnosed, the investigators report in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Overall, women who had ovulatory disorders had a 25 percent lower likelihood of developing breast cancer than those who did not.

Moreover, the risk of breast cancer was lowest in women who underwent induced ovulation for treatment of infertility.

“Our findings are reassuring since many women and their clinicians are concerned about the long-term implications of infertility treatment,” Dr. Terry told Reuters Health.

“However, it is difficult to tease apart the true effect of infertility drugs and infertility, since women who have the most difficultly getting pregnant will most likely be taking infertility drugs the longest,” she added.