Taking aspirin may nearly double the life expectancy of patients who have been diagnosed with cancers affecting the gastrointestinal tract, early results from a large trial suggest.
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About 50 per cent regularly took aspirin and those using the drug after their diagnosis were twice as likely to still be alive as non-users.
One thousand four hundred cancer patients in Netherlands participated in the study over four years.
Currently, researchers are carrying out another cancer and aspirin-related study in a multicenter, randomised, placebo-controlled trial that is looking into the effect of a daily dose of 80 mg aspirin on elderly patients with colon cancer in The Netherlands. The team also hopes to study tumor material from patients with the goal of determining who would benefit from aspirin treatment, and build on its findings by expanding the trial to cover other sites along the gastrointestinal tract. Of the subjects, 30.5 percent had used aspirin before being diagnosed, while 8.3 percent began taking it after the fact, and 61.1 percent had not used aspirin at all.
The scientists presented their research Monday at the biennial European Cancer Congress in Vienna, Austria. Frouws added that since aspirin is a cheap and off-patent drug with comparatively few side-effects, this will greatly influence healthcare systems in addition to patients. Median follow-up time for all patients was 48.6 months, with 28% of patients surviving for at least five years.
“Through studying the characteristics of tumours in patients where aspirin was beneficial, we should be able to identify patients who could profit from such treatment in the future”. While this is very useful when we get hurt, it’s thought that tumors may also hide from our immune system within these platelets and remain undetected. The Daily Mail Online reports an important warning from Dr. Áine McCarthy of Cancer Research United Kingdom: “Even though aspirin is widely available, it can have serious side effects like internal bleeding, so cancer patients shouldn’t take it without talking to their doctor first”. They think the aspirin works to inhibit the functioning of platelets, a type of blood cell that clumps together to help the blood clot or to fix damaged blood vessels.
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“Aspirin may serve as the magic bullet because it can target and prevent ischaemic heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, the three major health catastrophes in the third millennium”, ESMO [European Society for Medical Oncology] spokesperson, Professor Nadir Arber, MD, Head of the Integrated Cancer Prevention Center in Tel Aviv, Israel, said. They point to the antiplatelet effect of aspirin, which they believe makes the tumor cells more visible to the immune system.
