The fact that regular-size dose of aspirin can relieve a headache is not exactly news. The possibility that the drug might prevent the severe headaches known as migraines is. New preliminary findings in a large ongoing study suggest just that.
Harvard researchers used data from the Physicians’ Health Study, a trial testing aspirin and its effects on 22,000 male physicians between the ages of 40 and 84. Half the physicians are taking one aspirin (325 milligrams) every other day, while the other half take a placebo (inactive blank look-alike). After five years, the doctors taking the pain reliever report having 20 percent fewer migraines than the doctors taking the placebo.
“Treating a migraine once you get it is extremely difficult,” says Julie Burning, D.Sc. assistant professor of preventive medicine at Harvard Medical School. “If there is any way to prevent it in the first place, that would be very useful. And low-dose aspirin really seems to help.”
Although doctors do not know exactly how migraines originate, they think that platelets, disk-like particles in the blood that assist clotting, may be involved. Platelets contain serotonin, a chemical that many researchers credit with triggering migraines. They believe that when platelets stick together,” says Dr. Burning. “That may minimize their release of serotonin, which might prevent a migraine.” Of course, such a mechanism is still conjecture.