Aspirin 'cuts infection risk'

Aspirin has many benefits

Aspirin may help to reduce the risk of potentially deadly bacterial infection, say scientists.

The discovery is the latest in a long line of benefits which have been attributed to aspirin, including reducing the risk of heart disease, certain types of cancer and Alzheimer's.

A team from Dartmouth School of Medicine in New Hampshire has found that salicylic acid - a chemical produced when the body breaks down aspirin - blocks two genes which play a crucial role in enabling the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus to infect the body.

S. aureus is responsible for a devastating form of blood poisoning called sepsis, which is estimated to kill 1,400 people - including many people receiving hospital treatment for other conditions - worldwide every day.

It is also a leading cause of abscesses, and of serious infections such as endocarditis, pneumonia, and septicemia.

The threat of the bug is growing because it is increasingly growing resistant to antibiotic therapy.

Writing in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, the researchers say: "With the current widespread problem of multi-antibiotic resistance in S. aureus, development of new therapeutic agents that can mitigate the activation of bacterial virulence genes required for initiating and propagating infections is considered a high priority.

"The use of aspirin and salicylic acid appears to reduce staphylococcal virulence.

"Provided that a favorable safety profile is established in therapeutic trials of systemic S. aureus infection, aspirin may have the potential to be an effective adjunctive (additional) agent in the treatment of serious hospital- or community-acquired S. aureus infections."