Now, certainly Aspirin companies realized that their products can be used for headaches, they are used often for fevers and then used often for coronary artery diseases or people having heart attacks. And so they would not encourage everyone to take Aspirin. However, our health ministers here, the Surgeon General or the Centers for Disease Control really haven’t made a statement that everybody, all Americans should take an Aspirin. So we have to be careful because Aspirin use can lead to stomach ulcers as well. And so what I would do is to look to see what the risk profile of an individual is. If a person has risk factors, potential risk factors, say a family history, or the cholesterol is high, or perhaps they have high blood pressure, then they may be a little bit higher risk of developing heart disease, coronary diseases and I would recommend that they would take an Aspirin.

Okay. And now, right, and currently there are clinical trials that are in place that are trying to evaluate the, you know the potential of someone taking Aspirin long-term, whether it would be at moderate risk or perhaps at high risk and then the risk of developing stomach ulcers or other side effects or complications from taking Aspirin long term. And so these are clinical trials that are performed and looked at in a very rigid way to determine so people can better make a determination of whether a blanket statement could be made or not.

Paul L. Underwood Jr., M.D., is an interventional cardiologist in Phoenix, was the 10th president of the Atlanta-based Association of Black Cardiologists 2004-2006 (ABC), Inc.