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Health Check: Should you restart aspirin after a brain bleed stroke?

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2019/05/22 GMT

Should you restart aspirin after a brain bleed stroke?

BBC World Service - Health Check, Should you restart aspirin after a brain bleed stroke?

The trial results which suggest blood thinners reduce the risk of further brain bleeding

The simple medication that could halve the risk of a brain haemorrhage; Phasing out harmful use of mercury in Kenyan gold mining; A new global strategy to tackle snakebite.

The results of a medical trial called RESTART may be a game changer when it comes to the treatment of patients after a brain haemorrhage. More than a third of these patients take regular blood thinning medication such as aspirin after having had a heart attack or stroke in the past. And after a brain haemorrhage this leaves doctors with a dilemma. Should the antiplatelet medicines be restarted to prevent future heart attacks or could that increase the chances of another brain haemorrhage? Often doctors are reluctant to take the risk. 
Researchers led by a team at the University of Edinburgh have conducted a randomised controlled trial comparing patients who were restarted on their medication after a brain haemorrhage with those that were not. The surprising results have just been published in the journal Lancet, and lead author professor Rustam al-Shahi Salman tells Claudia what they found. 

About 12 to 15% of the world's gold comes from artisanal mining where people work with whatever tools they have to hand. In some countries, such as Kenya, mercury is used to separate the gold from the rock; workers burn the amalgam, sluice it by hand or even put it between their teeth to squeeze out the gold.  But touching, inhaling or ingesting mercury has long been known to cause serious health issues such as neurological problems, cancers, miscarriage or damage to a pregnant women’s foetus. Hannah McNeish visited Migori County in Kenya to look at attempts to prevent poisoning from becoming a major public health problem.

Every day more than 7,000 people are bitten by snakes, and even though anti-venoms are effective, approximately 300 of those die.  As well as people dying, many others are left with serious disabilities, which can leave whole families destitute. This week the World Health Organisation, or WHO, launched a new road map to try to tackle the problem once and for all.  And the Wellcome Trust has also just announced that they are investing more than 100 million dollars in scientific research looking at anti-venoms. Dr Bernadette Abela-Ridder is team leader for neglected zoonotic diseases in the Department for the Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases of the WHO.

(Photo: Senior man taking pills at home. Credit: Getty Images)

Health Check is presented by Claudia Hammond with comments from BBC Health and Science correspondent, James Gallagher.

Producer: Helena Selby

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