Study: Aspirin prevents cancer

Singapore: According to a new study, men who took aspirin regularly for their medical conditions and were also treated for prostate cancer were less likely to die of their cancer than patients who weren't taking aspirin. The aspirin users were also significantly less likely to experience a recurrence of prostate cancer or have the disease spread to the bones, the study found. The study was published by scientists of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Although the new research is not a randomized controlled clinical trial, but it adds to an growing body of evidence suggesting that aspirin may play a beneficial role in the treatment and the prevention of a variety of cancers, with much of the earlier research on aspirin focusing on colon cancer.

The researchers used the national database of a project known as CaPSURE, for Cancer of the Prostate Strategic Urologic Research Endeavor, to study 6,000 men, who had localized prostate cancer and were treated with surgery or radiotherapy. Just over one-third of the men, or 2,175 of the 5,955, were taking anticoagulants, mostly aspirin.

The scientists calculated that those men, who were taking aspirin were less than half as likely to die of prostate cancer as compared to those who were not, over a 10-year period. The researchers found that prostate cancer death rate for those taking aspirin was three percent when compared with eight percent for those individuals who did not.

Dr Kevin S Choe, lead author of the research and assistant professor, radiation oncology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, said that conducting a large randomized study with prostate cancer patients would be difficult, "because the natural progression of the disease is such that you won't know for 10-to-15 years and would have to follow people for many years."