Aspirin and Cancer Protection – an Update
Fri, January 7, 2011 at 03:00AM Many people take a small daily dose of aspirin to protect their cardiovascular system against the development of coronary artery disease. It’s been found that men get a degree of protection against heart attack and women against ischemic stroke. During the last 5 years or so information has emerged about the protective effect of daily aspirin on colorectal cancer. Now there’s a report in the journal Lancet that analyses data from some of the randomized trials done originally for the cardiovascular usage.
Oxford, UK, researchers found 8 placebo-controlled trials of the effects of a daily dose of aspirin that fulfilled the criteria they had set. These covered 25,500 patients, with 674 cancer deaths.
In subjects taking aspirin for at least 5 years, death rates for all cancers were found to have fallen by 34%, and for gastrointestinal cancers by 54%. The 20-year risk of cancer was estimated for12,600 patients, with 1,634 deaths. The rates for solid-tumor cancer deaths were reduced by 20% in the aspirin-taking subjects. These included lung, prostate, brain, bladder and kidney cancers; broken down by type of cancer, the reductions were 60% for esophageal, 40% for colorectal, 30% for lung, and 10% for prostate cancers.
Doctors are sometimes reluctant to recommend taking aspirin (in ‘baby’ aspirin doses – 81 mg daily) because of the slight increase in the risk of bleeding. The principal author of this analysis says, however, that the size of the beneficial effect on cancer rates is such that it more or less drowns out those sorts of risks. But, of course, before you start taking a baby aspirin a day, you should ask your doctor – if you can get an appointment.
Reader Comments (1)
Aspirin can prevent cancer is new to me. Thanks for the informative and analytical article. Keep the good job doing.