A new negative effect found in aspirin can cause loss of vision if used for a long time. A group of American scientists from the University of Wisconsin identified the possibility of a twofold increase in the risk of blindness in people who used the drug for 10 years. In addition, long-term use of aspirin can lead to other visual impairments that are not accompanied by its complete loss.
The disease, known as age-related macular degeneration (AMD), is one of the leading causes of blindness and low vision at an older age, and it is its development, according to experts, that can provoke acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin).
In their study, specialists from the University of Wisconsin used data from the Center for the Study of Ophthalmology in the United States about nearly 5 thousand people who voluntarily underwent eye examinations every 5 years over a 20-year period. Before starting the analysis of the collected information, the scientists conducted a survey among the participants, specifying how often and for how long they used aspirin.
The experts took two different forms of age-related macular degeneration as the main subjects of research - wet, which causes loss of vision, and dry, which is more common and less dangerous, but capable of developing into a wet form of AMD.
Out of 5 thousand participants, 512 people suffered from the dry type of AMD, while the wet type was detected in 117 people. After completing the necessary calculations, scientists found that people who took aspirin for 10 years with a regularity of at least 2 times a week had an average risk of developing AMD of 1.4%.
For participants who did not take this drug, or did it extremely rarely, the average value of the same indicator was 0.6%. As for the dry form of AMD, the level of influence of aspirin on its development was not established by scientists, however, in the report, the researchers noted that the existence of this connection is more than obvious, and, in particular, in some cases it could serve as a threshold for the development of wet AMD .
