What is the correlation between cancer and aspirin?

How does it lower your risk of getting cancer?

Experts are saying that consuming low dose aspirin daily might lower the risk of a person getting colon & gastrointestinal cancer. 

The authors of study said that they looked at patients who had been taking aspirin daily for a few years. The senior researcher on the study, Dr. Andrew Chan, from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, commented on the findings. He said, “That makes sense, because cancers don't typically develop overnight. They take years to develop, so you would have to take aspirin for a long time to prevent cancer. There is scientific evidence that aspirin has an effect on certain biological pathways that can result in cancer.”

How was the study conducted?

Dr. Chan and the team looked at the connection between aspirin and cancer among over 130,000 women and men who took part in the long-term Nurses' Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. They found that during more than 3 decades of follow-up, there were over 20,000 cancers among more than 88,000 women, and more than 7,500 cancers in almost 48,000 men.

They found that consuming low-dose aspirin two times or more per week was linked with a 3 percent overall decrease for cancer, heavily due to a 15 percent lower risk for gastrointestinal cancers and a 19 percent decreased threat for cancers of the colon and rectum.

“Taking aspirin regularly might prevent 17 percent of colon cancers among those who are not screened with colonoscopy and 8.5 percent of colon cancers among those who are, the research indicated,” according to CBS news.

What advantages does taking aspirin have and how is this linked to cancer?

Taking aspirin decreases inflammation and the amount of particular cancer-causing proteins. The new study shows that taking aspirin is connected with a decrease in the threat of cancer, not that it prevents it. There are multiple other credited studies that support these findings.

The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s Oncology journal. Dr. Chan is strongly advocating the aspirin approach saying the findings have reached the point that it would ‘be useful to consider using aspirin to prevent colon cancer’.

Dr. Hawk, the vice president of the division of cancer prevention and population sciences at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, in Houston also commented on the study.

He said, “This is another study suggesting reductions in gastrointestinal and colon cancers among people who take aspirin for other reasons, such as reducing the risk of heart attacks or treating arthritis and relieving pain.” Hawk also co-authored an editorial that went along with the research.

Read the source article here.

Gerry Oginski
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NY Medical Malpractice & Personal Injury Trial Lawyer
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