Wednesday, October 14, 2009

In 1918 Pandemic, Another Possible Killer: Aspirin

A nurse took a patient's pulse in the influenza ward at Walter Reed Hospital in 1918. Corbis

From The New York Times:

The 1918 flu epidemic was probably the deadliest plague in human history, killing more than 50 million people worldwide. Now it appears that a small number of the deaths may have been caused not by the virus, but by a drug used to treat it: aspirin.

Dr. Karen M. Starko, author of one of the earliest papers connecting aspirin use with Reye’s syndrome, has published an article suggesting that overdoses of the relatively new “wonder drug” could have been deadly.

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