Many healthy people take a daily aspirin to reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke, but a new study has found that more than 11 percent of them should not be doing so.
为了降低心脏病和中风的风险，许多健康的人也每天服用阿司匹林，但一项新的研究发现，在这些人当中，有11%以上其实不应这样做。
Aspirin has well established benefits, but also carries the risk of gastrointestinal bleeding. The American Heart Association guidelines recommend daily aspirin for primary prevention in people with a 10-year cardiovascular risk of 10 percent or more. Other guidelines suggest the cut-off should be a risk of 6 percent. (You can assess your risk at the National Institutes of Health’s online risk calculator.)
虽然阿司匹林的健康效益久已确立，但它也会带来胃肠道出血的风险。美国心脏协会(American Heart Association)的指南建议，心血管疾病10年风险达到10%或以上者可每天服用阿司匹林作为一级预防。其他指南则建议风险cut-off值（即截止值）应为6%（你可以使用美国国立卫生研究院[National Institutes of Health]的在线风险计算器来评估自己的风险）。

Researchers studied records of 68,808 patients taking aspirin for primary cardiovascular prevention in various kinds of medical practices between 2008 and 2011. They found that 7,972 of them, or 11.6 percent, were taking aspirin daily despite having a cardiovascular disease risk of less than 6 percent.
研究人员研究了2008年至2011年间，多种不同的医疗诊所中，服用阿司匹林作为心血管疾病一级预防的68808名患者的医疗记录。他们发现，其中7972人(11.6%)的心血管疾病风险低于6%，但他们仍每日服用阿司匹林。
In some groups, inappropriate use was even more common. For example, 17 percent of women taking aspirin had less than a 6 percent risk. The study was published in The Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
阿司匹林使用不当的情况在某些人群中还要更为普遍。例如，在服用阿司匹林的女性中，有17%的人心血管疾病风险都小于6%。这项研究发表在《美国心脏病学会杂志》(The Journal of the American College of Cardiology)上。
“We need a discussion between the patient and the clinician to see that we’re not causing more harm than good,” said the senior author, Dr. Salim S. Virani, a cardiologist at Baylor College of Medicine. Because a lot of patients take aspirin, he added, the “public health risk could be high.”
该研究的责任作者，美国贝勒医学院(Baylor College of Medicine)的心脏病学家萨利姆·S·韦拉尼(Dr. Salim S. Virani)认为：“患者和医生需要讨论一下这样做是不是弊大于利。”由于有很多患者服用阿司匹林，他补充道，“公共卫生风险可能会非常高。”