This is useful in some hospital situations when the risk of dangerous clots is especially high. But the probability of unintended and possibly disastrous bleeding is too high to continue this treatment indefinitely. The pill form is less powerful. It inhibits platelets about 50 percent. Still, this is potent medicine, and it seemed logical it would help people with serious heart disease, since misguided clots are the primary trigger of heart attacks and strokes.
Researchers have several theories about what went wrong.
Maybe super-aspirin somehow triggers heart cells to commit suicide. Or perhaps it sets off a wave of inflammation. However, the leading theory is that the pills fail because of their halfway action. In hindsight, it appears that partially disabling the body's clot-making machinery this way is a bad idea. These drugs, whether injected or swallowed, work by sticking to something called the fibrinogen receptor.