Cancer: the benefits of aspirin
Previous work has shown that long-term low-dose aspirin (75 mg per day) reduces colorectal cancer mortality rates by more than a third.
For this new study, Professor Peter Rothwell (University of Oxford, UK) and his colleagues studied deaths from all cancers that occurred during and after trials comparing patients taking aspirin daily with those who did not didn't take it. These trials were for cardiovascular prevention, not cancer.
To conduct their work, the authors selected 8 trials with 25,570 patients.
According to them, taking aspirin daily for 5 to 10 years, as in these trials, reduces all-cause mortality (including fatal bleeding) by about 10% during this period.
And, according to their analysis, over 20 years, the risk of cancer death is about 10% for prostate cancer, 30% for lung cancer, 40% for colorectal cancer and 60% for esophagus cancer. For the latter, as for lung cancer, the benefit is limited to a category of tumours ("adenocarcinomas").
According to Professor Rothwell, if people were treated with low doses of aspirin for 20 to 30 years, those who would start this treatment in their late 40s or 50s could ultimately benefit the most.
Further research is needed, according to the authors, in particular to assess the impact of aspirin on female cancers. Medical follow-up beyond 20 years is essential to see if there is a late rebound in cancer mortality, they add.
Beware, these results do not mean that all adults should immediately start taking aspirin, but demonstrate significant benefits, at low doses in terms of reducing mortality due to several common cancers, which is new, they say. "Taking aspirin daily is a serious medical treatment that must be prescribed and controlled by the patient's referring oncologist and not by a simple general practitioner. In addition, if a patient exceeds the dose prescribed by his oncologist, he is at risk of another risk: bleeding (aspirin has the main property of fluidizing the blood)," responds Prof. Claude Maylin, head of the oncology department at the hospital St. Louis, in an article for L'Express.
For this new study, Professor Peter Rothwell (University of Oxford, UK) and his colleagues studied deaths from all cancers that occurred during and after trials comparing patients taking aspirin daily with those who did not didn't take it. These trials were for cardiovascular prevention, not cancer.
To conduct their work, the authors selected 8 trials with 25,570 patients.
According to them, taking aspirin daily for 5 to 10 years, as in these trials, reduces all-cause mortality (including fatal bleeding) by about 10% during this period.
And, according to their analysis, over 20 years, the risk of cancer death is about 10% for prostate cancer, 30% for lung cancer, 40% for colorectal cancer and 60% for esophagus cancer. For the latter, as for lung cancer, the benefit is limited to a category of tumours ("adenocarcinomas").
According to Professor Rothwell, if people were treated with low doses of aspirin for 20 to 30 years, those who would start this treatment in their late 40s or 50s could ultimately benefit the most.
Further research is needed, according to the authors, in particular to assess the impact of aspirin on female cancers. Medical follow-up beyond 20 years is essential to see if there is a late rebound in cancer mortality, they add.
Beware, these results do not mean that all adults should immediately start taking aspirin, but demonstrate significant benefits, at low doses in terms of reducing mortality due to several common cancers, which is new, they say. "Taking aspirin daily is a serious medical treatment that must be prescribed and controlled by the patient's referring oncologist and not by a simple general practitioner. In addition, if a patient exceeds the dose prescribed by his oncologist, he is at risk of another risk: bleeding (aspirin has the main property of fluidizing the blood)," responds Prof. Claude Maylin, head of the oncology department at the hospital St. Louis, in an article for L'Express.