Aspirin prevents Prostate Cancer?
Though the evidence for it isn't as compelling as it is for some other cancers, aspirin may modestly reduce the risk that a man will develop prostate cancer, a large new study suggests.
Men who regularly took aspirin had a 15 percent lower risk of developing prostate cancer than non-users, and those who took two or more pills a day had 20 percent less risk, the study found. About 230,000 new cases of prostate cancer are expected to be diagnosed in the United States this year. The benefit that this study suggests from aspirin use isn't much less than the 25 percent reduction in risk that another study last year found for men taking finasteride, sold as Proscar.
And those findings, which came from a more rigorously conducted study than the aspirin one, excited federal health officials so much that they stopped the study and declared the drug beneficial. Aspirin is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, or NSAID, a category that includes most over-the-counter pain medicine except acetaminophen (Tylenol). NSAIDs block a substance called COX-2, which triggers inflammation and is thought to play a part in cancer's formation and spread. Many studies suggest that aspirin can prevent colon cancer, but tests of it against hormone-fueled cancers such as breast and prostate have been mixed. The most recent research gives reason for optimism. Last year, the Women's Health Initiative study found that aspirin cut breast cancer risk by 20 percent to 30 percent, and this year, an analysis of results on prostate cancer tests concluded that aspirin might help. The newest study, offered at a recent meeting her of the American Association for Cancer Research, adds to that notion. The study involved 30,000 men ages 55 to 74 in the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial, a National Cancer Institute-funded experiment under way at 10 sites around the country. About one-third of the men said they took aspirin daily, although data on whether they took adult- or baby-strength aspirin wasn't collected. After an average of four years of follow-up, 1,338 prostate cancers were diagnosed in the group. The cancer risk was 15 percent lower among men who took one aspirin a day compared with those who took no aspirin, and 20 percent lower among those who took two pills or more a day, said Lori Sakoda, the scientist who led the research. Jim Shaw
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