[h=1]Aspirin Both Triggers And Treats An Often-Missed Disease[/h]
Updated March 21, 20167:52 AM ET
Published March 21, 20165:04 AM ET
... "I was seeing a doctor in Bangkok at this point," she says. "He was like, 'This is not normal.' " But the doctor mentioned that aspirin can cause nasal polyps. This was Fite's first real clue about her illness. It's called aspirin-exacerbated respiratory disease, or
AERD.
It was first described in the early 1900s, says
Dr. Tanya Laidlaw, an immunologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston who studies the disease. It's seen in "patients who had this triad of asthma, nasal polyps and these rather idiosyncratic reactions to medications like aspirin," Laidlaw says....
