NSAIDs increase the risk of venous thromboembolism

Use of certain pain relieving medication, the so-called NSAIDs, increases the risk of venous thromboembolism. That is evident from a study conducted by researchers from Department of Clinical Epidemiology and colleagues. The study included 8,000 with venous thromboembolism and 80,000 controls. The researchers looked into how many patients had received a NSAID prescription prior to the venous thromboembolism. They found that the risk of venous thromboembolism was more than twice as high among patients who had used NSAIDs – regardless of duration of use.

The study results have just been published in Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21592304).