Plain aspirin is just as good as the more expensive buffered variety. This conclusion, which will be a surprise to many physicians as well as lay viewers of TV commercials, was reported last week in the New England Journal of Medicine by two independent medical investigators after new-studies.
Major trouble with previous tests in which some medical researchers thought they detected advantages in buffering the aspirin with antacids, said New York Medical College’s Dr. Robert C. Batterman, was that they relied on patients’ faulty memories. To rule out this and other sources of error. Dr. Batterman did “double blind” tests: identical-looking tablets, one plain, one buffered, were used with only a code letter for labeling. Neither the patients nor the doctors and nurses knew which was which until after the results were tabulated. The results showed that, buffer or no buffer, there was the same amount of pain relief, the same frequency and intensity of stomach upsets suffered by some patients.
Syracuse University’s Dr. G. Arnold Cronk ran a similar test, found that from either type of tablet the aspirin gets into the blood at just the same speed, gives equal pain relief equally fast, and the relief lasts the same length of time.
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