My life without anti-inflammatories wouldn't be worth a mouse's fart. I'm going to keep taking Aleve.
I'm going to continue taking Aleve too.
Statistics are fun.
The study on Aleve was only on Alzheimer's patients, who are mostly elderly and therefore already at greater risk of heart attack and stroke than young/middle-aged people. The full story said "about 70 patients of the 2,500 suffered stroke or heart attack, including 23 deaths, and that there were about 50 percent more such events in the naproxen arm of the study than in the placebo division." That means 2.8 percent of these patients had heart attacks and strokes. If there were "50 percent more events" among patients who were taking Aleve, I think that means something like 4 percent of these patients suffered heart attacks and strokes.
So - we're talking about a less than 1.5 percent increase in absolute risk (as opposed to a 50 percent increase in relative risk), among a fairly small number (about 830) of elderly Alzheimer's patients. This isn't what I would call a definitive study of the safety of Aleve, especially given that this is a drug that's been out for 30 years and that means there is a lot of data about what it does to the body.
I think the increased risk is sufficient for them to stop the study. But I definitely don't think the data is sufficient to consider taking Aleve off the market.
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I'm going to continue taking Aleve too.
Statistics are fun.
The study on Aleve was only on Alzheimer's patients, who are mostly elderly and therefore already at greater risk of heart attack and stroke than young/middle-aged people. The full story said "about 70 patients of the 2,500 suffered stroke or heart attack, including 23 deaths, and that there were about 50 percent more such events in the naproxen arm of the study than in the placebo division." That means 2.8 percent of these patients had heart attacks and strokes. If there were "50 percent more events" among patients who were taking Aleve, I think that means something like 4 percent of these patients suffered heart attacks and strokes.
So - we're talking about a less than 1.5 percent increase in absolute risk (as opposed to a 50 percent increase in relative risk), among a fairly small number (about 830) of elderly Alzheimer's patients. This isn't what I would call a definitive study of the safety of Aleve, especially given that this is a drug that's been out for 30 years and that means there is a lot of data about what it does to the body.
I think the increased risk is sufficient for them to stop the study. But I definitely don't think the data is sufficient to consider taking Aleve off the market.