7th December, 2010
Taking an aspirin every day cuts the risk of dying from a range of common cancers, according to a major study.
British researchers have discovered the first definitive evidence that aspirin reduces overall death rates by a third after just five years’ use.
Rates were slashed by half for some cancers and the longer people took the drug, the better the protection.
The study has led to the 100-year-old painkiller – costing just 1p a tablet – being hailed as ‘the most amazing drug in the world.’
Experts say healthy middle-aged people who start taking low-dose aspirin around the age of 45 or 50 for 20 to 30 years could expect to reap the most benefit, because cancer rates rise with age.
In addition, a 75mg dose – a quarter of a standard 300mg tablet – helps prevent heart attacks and strokes even in people who have not been diagnosed with cardiovascular problems.
Millions of heart patients who already take low-dose aspirin on doctors’ orders to ward off a second heart attack or stroke will be getting built-in cancer protection.
There has been widespread concern that side effects such as stomach bleeding and haemorrhagic stroke would outweigh any advantage among healthy people starting a daily regime.
But Professor Peter Rothwell, of the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, who headed the latest study of almost 26,000 patients, is convinced the ground rules have changed. He said: “These findings provide the first proof in man that aspirin reduces deaths due to several common cancers.
“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.â€
The study, published in The Lancet medical journal, looked at eight trials where heart patients were allocated daily aspirin or dummy treatment for five years. The heart benefits had already been reported – this time the researchers wanted to discover what happened to death rates from cancer. They found dramatic results, with aspirin linked to fewer deaths from a host of cancers. After five years of taking aspirin, death rates fell by 34 percent for all cancers and 54 percent for gastrointestinal cancers. Even after 20 years, the risk of cancer death remained 20 percent lower in groups previously allocated aspirin for all solid cancers and 35 percent lower for gastrointestinal cancers.
It took five years for the benefits to emerge for oesophageal (gullet), pancreatic, brain and some forms of lung cancer. It took ten years for protection to take effect in stomach and colorectal cancer and 15 years for prostate cancer. Too few women were included in the trials to give results for breast and ovarian cancer but the figures were ‘all in the right direction’.
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