One dose of aspirin a day cuts cancer risk | The Australian

One dose of aspirin a day cuts cancer risk | The Australian
TAKING a daily aspirin can dramatically cut the risk of dying from cancer, a landmark study has concluded.
Significant health benefits begin to appear after five years of taking a low dose of the drug, with death rates for all cancers falling by 34 per cent, and for stomach and bowel cancers by 54 per cent.
Aspirin is already known to protect against heart attacks and strokes, but the study of more than 25,570 patients, published today in The Lancet, is the first to prove that the drug is effective against a range of common cancers.
The findings suggest that millions of people could benefit from taking a daily pill, which would also reduce the chances of dying from prostate, lung, oesophagus, brain and pancreatic cancers.
The effects were seen even at a low dose of 75mg a day, about a quarter of that contained in a standard pill taken to relieve headache.
Although taking aspirin daily is known to increase the risk of internal bleeding, the researchers said the protection that the drug could offer against cancer means that many more people should consider taking it from middle age, and official advice may have to be changed.
"These results do not mean that all adults should immediately start taking aspirin, but they do demonstrate major new benefits that have not previously been factored into guideline recommendations," said Professor Peter Rothwell, of the University of Oxford, who led the research.
"Previous guidelines have rightly cautioned that in healthy middle-aged people the small risk of bleeding on aspirin partly offsets the benefits from prevention of strokes and heart attacks, but the reductions in deaths due to several common cancers will now alter this balance for many people."
Professor Rothwell and his colleagues also say that those who took aspirin for between five and ten years had a 10 per cent lower risk of dying from any cause, including internal bleeding, during that time.
He believes that people in their late forties and fifties would benefit from taking aspirin for 20 to 30 years, when the benefits outweigh the risks. Professor Rothwell, 46, said that he had recently begun taking daily aspirin himself as a result of his data. "Some people will look at this and say that the sensible thing to do is to start taking aspirin at about 45, take it for 25 to 30 years, then stop," he added.
For cancers of the pancreas, oesophagus, brain and lungs, it took at least five years of daily aspirin to see a reduction in deaths, ten years for stomach and bowel cancer and 15 years for prostate cancer.
The mechanism by which aspirin stops cancer developing is unclear, although laboratory research suggests that it may repair damaged DNA or cause potentially dangerous cells to commit suicide.
Two months ago Professor Rothwell's team showed that a daily low dose of aspirin can reduce death rates from bowel cancer by more than a third, while this year scientists in the US reported that the same low dose cut the risk of men developing prostate cancer by up to 30 per cent.
But this latest study is the first to show a clear effect across a whole range of human cancers.
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They found that for those who had taken aspirin for several years the 20-year risk of dying of all solid cancers was cut by 20 per cent, and by 35 per cent for stomach and bowel cancers.
The 20-year risk of death was reduced by about 10 per cent for prostate cancer, 30 per cent for lung cancer, 40 per cent for bowel cancer and 60 per cent for oesophageal cancer.
Alastair Watson, of the University of East Anglia, said that the study was "a very important new development in our understanding of how to prevent cancer in general. It is further proof that aspirin is, by a long way, the most amazing drug in the world".