Can a daily dose of aspirin cut the risk of cancer?
Here’s a surprising news item which is certainly worth looking at for the risk of getting the big C seems to be on a lot of people’s minds these days:
A daily dose of aspirin appears to cut the risk of a common type of cancer
Colorectal cancer is one of the most common types of cancer, and researchers say they have found a way to reduce one’s risk of it by up to 45% – by taking aspirin, Advil, Motrin, Aleve or certain other painkillers.
A new study finds that people who took 75 to 150 milligrams of aspirin every day for at least five years were 27% less likely to be diagnosed with colorectal cancer than people who didn’t. (A tablet of regular Bayer aspirin, for instance, contains 325 mg of aspirin. The low-dose version designed to reduce the risk of a recurrent heart attack of stroke contain 81 mg of aspirin.)
Other types of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDs, appeared to reduce the risk even more. People who took non-aspirin NSAIDs for at least five years were 30% to 45% less likely to have colorectal cancer than those who didn’t take the painkillers. Ibuprofen (the active ingredient in Advil and Motrin, among others) and naproxen (the active ingredient in Aleve) are two examples of this type of NSAIDs.
Previous studies have suggested that regular use of aspirin or other NSAIDs may help protect against colorectal cancer. But the studies didn’t provide clear answers on the ideal dose to see a protective effect or how long someone would need to take it.
So the researchers turned to data from Denmark to find 10,280 adults from the northern part of the country who were diagnosed with colorectal cancer between 1994 and 2011. For each patient, the researchers also identified 10 “controls” – adults who shared the same birth year and gender and lived in the same area but did not have colorectal cancer.
