Passage 23

　　Researchers (研究者) have announced (宣布) the result of two studies on the health effects of the drug aspirin (阿斯匹林). One study shows aspirin can sharply reduce the chance that a healthy, older man will suffer from a heart attack (心脏病).

　　The study offered two new results from earlier findings. It said taking one aspirin pill every other day helped only healthy men over the age of fifty. It also said aspirin gave the greatest protection against heart attacks to men with low blood cholesterol (胆固醇) levels.

　　Earlier in the United States began a major aspirin study in the early 1980s. It included 22,000 healthy men doctors. All were between the ages of forty and eighty-four. More than 11,000 of the doctors took a harmless pill that contained no drug. The men did not know which kind of pill they were taking.

　　The doctors who took aspirin suffered 44% fewer heart attacks than those taking the harmless pill. 139 men who took aspirin suffered from heart attacks. Ten of them died. 239 men who did not take aspirin suffered from heart attacks. Twenty-six of them died.

　　The researchers said the doctors’ study provides clear proof that taking aspirin can prevent a first heart attack in healthy, older men. They said, however, the result does not mean every man over the age of fifty should take aspirin. They said aspirin couldn’t help men who do not eat healthy foods, who smoke cigarettes and who are fat. The researchers said men who think they would be helped by taking aspirin should talk with their doctors first.