According to a new study, aspirin reduces the risk of pre-eclampsia during pregnancy. Pre-eclampsia is a condition of pregnancy characterized by a sudden increase in blood pressure after the sixth month of pregnancy, associated with proteinuria (excess of serum proteins in the urine.

The study, published in the upcoming edition of The Lancest, concluded that the risks of developing pre-eclampsia, of delivering before 34 weeks and of having a pregnancy with severe adverse outcome all fell by 10% in those women taking aspirin or other antiplatelet drugs.

Dr Lisa Askie, University of Sydney, Australia, with funding from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, along with colleagues from Australia and the UK, formed the Perinatal Antiplatelet Review of International Studies (PARIS) collaborative group and did a meta-analysis on more than 32 000 women and their babies.

Although aspirin may have this effect, in an accompanying Comment, Professor James Roberts and Dr Janet Catov, Magee-Women's Research Institute and Departments of Obstetrics Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences and Epidemiology, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, say: "There are certain settings in which pre-eclampsia is almost a certainty, including women with pre-eclampsia in more than one pregnancy or women with chronic hypertension and pre-eclampsia in a previous pregnancy. In these settings, aspirin is justified.�

"In the more usual setting of risk at about 20%, as in chronic hypertension, multiple gestations, pre-pregnancy diabetes or pre-eclampsia in one previous pregnancy, whether benefits outweigh theoretical long term risks is more difficult to judge.", they added.