This is the third large study in the last year to suggest potential eye disease from regular aspirin use.  It’s a small risk. Aspirin does protect against heart attack, stroke, and dementia, and when used for over 5 years, it protects against many types of cancer. But if you are part of the 1% who gets this serious eye disease, then statistics mean nothing. But the conclusions are still not set in stone, and a soon-to-be published study may even reflect opposite results. So, right now, aspirin use is a conundrum. Bottom line: Try to avoid it for pain control and have thorough discussions with your doctor about any use of it on a regular basis. Aspirin is not as simple as we used to think. Remember, this year we learned that folks with hidden stomach infections with h. pylori are more prone to dangerous bleeding from daily aspirin. If you regularly take aspirin, get tested for this bug and treated if found to have it; then the risk of bleeds from aspirin is greatly reduced. (JAMA Internal Medicine online (formerly Archives of Neurology 2013)  Turns out there is no drug without a shadow side. Actually, there is no one, no thing, in this life without a shadow side. We live in the world of duality, so there are always both sides, light and dark.