Aspirin for Prophylaxis Against Cerebral Aneurysm Rupture

Abstract

To assess the association between aspirin use and risk of aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH).A systematic search was performed in various databases updated on October 22, 2019. The heterogeneity test was performed for each outcome variable. Random-effect model and fixed-effect model were respectively conducted according to the heterogeneity statistics. Trial sequential analysis was used to control random errors.Ten studies involving 1,107,616 patients were involved in this meta-analysis. No significant association was shown between aspirin users and non-aspirin users regarding the risk of aSAH (odds ratio [OR]: 0.981, 95% confidential interval [CI]: 0.773–1.312, P = 0.897]. The results of subgroup analyses indicated that the risk of aSAH was notably associated with a short-term use of aspirin (<3 months) (OR: 1.697, 95% CI: 1.175–2.452, P = 0.005), but not aspirin use for 3–12 months (OR: 1.026, 95% CI: 0.609–1.730, P = 0.922), 1–3 years (OR: 0.942, 95% CI: 0.660–1.346, P = 0.744), >3 years (OR: 0.892, 95% CI: 0.573–1.389, P = 0.612), ≤2 times per week (OR: 0.857, 95% CI: 0.560–1.313, P = 0.479), ≥3 times per week (OR: 1.104, 95% CI: 0.555–2.193, P = 0.778) and former use (OR: 1.029, 95% CI: 0.482–2.196, P = 0.941).A short-term use of aspirin (<3 months) is associated with an elevated risk of aSAH, whereas the role of its long-term use in either decreasing or increasing the risk of aSAH still requires well-designed, large-scale randomized control trials for verification.