Aspirin has been shown to reduce cardiovascular events in at-risk individuals, but some aspirin-treated patients fail to exhibit expected changes in bleeding time and platelet aggregation. Recent evidence has correlated aspirin "non-response" to poor cardiovascular outcomes.
In order to study the mechanisms of aspirin resistance, an assay is needed to measure the catalytic activity of platelet cyclooxygenase (which should be inhibited by aspirin). A common assay in general use is the measurement of thromboxane B2 production in clotting whole blood. This measure, however, is influenced by genetic and environmental variations in the glass-activated coagulation pathway, albumin binding capacity, platelet activation pathways, arachidonic acid pools, and phospholipase activity.
Our laboratory has developed a direct assay of platelet cyclooxygenase (COX-1) activity that is not influenced by these variations. This study will generate a reference range in normal volunteers taking a routine clinical dose of aspirin (81mg daily) for this assay.
