Taking 75mg of aspirin daily for longer than five years reduces the risk of dying from a wide range of cancers, according to 'The Lancet' study, writes DR MUIRIS HOUSTON
ALREADY ESTABLISHED as one of the most effective drugs known to man, aspirin has now become a “superdrug” following the publication of research this morning showing that taking a daily low-dose aspirin for longer than five years reduces your risk of dying from a wide range of cancers.
The large study, published online by The Lancet, compared people who had taken 75mg of aspirin a day with matched controls who had not taken the drug and followed them for up to 20 years to see if taking aspirin had any effect on dying from cancer.
The researchers from Oxford University found that taking aspirin reduced overall cancer mortality by one-fifth.
Remarkably, the reduction is seen across a whole range of cancers, including digestive organ and lung cancer, which together account for almost 50 per cent of cancer deaths in Ireland each year.
Prof Peter Rothwell and his colleagues analysed eight randomised trials involving more than 25,500 people which were originally conducted to assess the cardiovascular benefits of aspirin.
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 colorectal cancer and 60 per cent for oesophageal (gullet) cancer.
Benefits were seen after taking aspirin for five years for oesophageal, pancreatic, brain and lung cancer.
Taking aspirin for 10 years reduced death from stomach cancer, while mortality from prostate cancer dropped after taking aspirin for some 15 years.
“These findings provide the first proof in humans that aspirin reduces deaths due to several common cancers. Benefit was consistent across the different trial populations, suggesting the findings are likely to be generalisable,” the authors state.
No additional cancer-preventing benefit was found by increasing the aspirin dose beyond 75mg a day, but the absolute effect on 20-year risk of cancer death increased with age.
The authors suggest that if people are treated with 20-30 years of low-dose aspirin, it would be those starting treatment in their late 40s or 50s who might eventually derive the most benefit.
Commenting on the ground-breaking research, Prof Rothwell said: “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.”
He added that “previous guidelines have rightly cautioned that in healthy middle-aged people, the small risk of bleeding on aspirin partly offsets the benefit 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.”
In terms of cost-effectiveness, the authors note the benefits of aspirin would exceed that of established initiatives such as screening for breast or prostate cancer.
This could potentially justify added costs to reduce bleeding complications, such as co-prescription of drugs designed to prevent bleeding in the stomach.
“Perhaps the most important finding for the longer term is the proof of principle that cancers can be prevented by simple compounds like aspirin and that ‘chemoprevention’ is, therefore, a realistic goal for future research with other compounds,” Prof Rothwell concluded.