The study team found that patients who were suggested to take aspirin after diagnosis, were twice likely to survive, compared to patients who were already taking aspirin or didn’t take aspirin at all.
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The research was led by Dr. Martine Frouws of Leiden University Medical Centre in the Netherlands and is providing continuing evidence that strongly points toward aspirin being useful in prevention and treatment of cancer. She added that, “Now we would like to analyse tumor material from these patients to try to discover which ones would benefit from aspirin treatment”.
The study found that across each different type of gastrointestinal cancer, almost 28 percent of the patients survived for a minimum of five years.
A new study found that a daily dose of aspirin may double the life expectancy of people with cancer of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract.
While researchers still aren’t quite sure how aspirin exactly helps prevent death from cancer, they are confident that their results were not influenced by any other factors they failed to consider.
Although the exact reason for aspirin being an anticancer mechanism is not clear, the researchers noted that it could be down to its antiplatelet properties. Circulating tumour cells (CTCs) are thought to hide themselves from the immune system with the help of the clothing of platelets that surround them. Aspirin blocks the function of blood platelets, which leaves CTCs vulnerable to attack from white blood cells and other antibodies.
“In most observational studies an “intention to treat” method (once an aspirin user, always an aspirin user) is used for analysing aspirin’s effect”.
Dr. Frouws explained the medical research field’s transition to focusing on personalized medicine, but noted that many personalized treatments can be extremely expensive and are typically only effective in small populations. This latest Netherlands study claims that the over-the-counter drug can “boost treatment responses in patients with breast, skin, and bowel cancers”.
“Through studying the characteristics of tumors in patients where aspirin was beneficial, we should be able to identify patients who could profit from such treatment in the future”.
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At present, a multicentre, randomised, placebo-controlled trial is investigating the effect of a daily dose of 80 mg aspirin on OS of elderly patients with colon cancer in The Netherlands. While these variations are rare, they can be instrumental in understanding which patients could benefit from aspirin. It is now commonly thought that the analgesic, if used frequently “can prevent bowel cancer” but this latest study also shows that “men and women with a range of cancers… experience a significant survival benefit compared with those who do not”, reports The Guardian.
