Aspirin for cancer prevention: mixed results
Does aspirin help with cancer?
Kirill Stasevich, "Science and Life"
Prepared based on the materials of the National Cancer Institute (No Easy Answers about Whether Aspirin Lowers Cancer Risk) and Medicalexpress (Aspirin May Help Ward Off Gastro Cancers, Study Finds).
Aspirin is considered one of the most popular antipyretics and painkillers, and most often we take it during a cold. But this does not exhaust its useful properties – it is also prescribed for the prevention of cardiovascular diseases. According to statistics, regular use of aspirin reduces the likelihood of stroke and heart attack. Finally, it can also act against cancer: there is evidence that it reduces the risk of various types of tumors. Two years ago, an article was published in Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology, which stated that 75-100 mg of aspirin per day is enough to reduce the probability of a malignant neoplasm by 30% within five years (Thun et al., The role of aspirin in cancer prevention). However, such studies usually either have a small sample of data, or rely on the analysis of other people's publications, or talk about cancer in general, without distinguishing its types and subspecies.
Yin Cao and her colleagues from Harvard in their work tried to find out how aspirin affects specific types of cancer. The authors analyzed a large amount of data collected since 1980 during various clinical trials; the overall statistics covered more than 82 thousand women and more than 47 thousand men. In each case, the way a person took aspirin, individual risk factors for cancer and the actual results of cancer diagnosis were compared. The conclusion turned out to be this: if a person took 325 mg of aspirin twice a week or more often, and took it regularly enough, then the likelihood of developing cancer decreased – compared to those who did not take aspirin at all. However, the "improvement in statistics" did not apply to all types of tumors. As it turned out, aspirin is good at resisting gastrointestinal oncological diseases, such as esophageal cancer, rectal cancer or colon cancer. In total, the probability of such tumors fell by 20%. But in the case of breast cancer, or lung cancer, or its other varieties, no effect of aspirin could be calculated.
The effect was manifested over a long period of time, that is, the chances of getting a tumor noticeably decreased only after at least 16 years of regular use of aspirin. On the other hand, if a person stopped taking it, then cancer protection disappeared quite quickly, literally in a few years. In addition, everything depended on the dose, that is, the larger the weekly dose of aspirin, the more the likelihood of cancer decreased. Neither body weight, nor smoking habits, nor multivitamins, nor painkillers, nor diabetes or cases of malignant diseases in the family did not affect the relationship between cancer and long-term use of aspirin. There were also no differences due to a person's race or gender.
It should be emphasized here that the data obtained do not say anything about the mechanisms of the aspirin anti–oncogenic effect - we only see a correlation between the two parameters. However, there is every reason to believe this correlation: the statistical analysis carried out covers a large array of clinical observations made over a sufficiently long (more than 30 years) time interval. At the same time, it cannot be said that we know absolutely nothing about the molecular genetic levers with which aspirin could act on cancer. Thus, recent studies have identified several genes and enzymes (including inflammatory ones) that may be involved in oncogenesis and that are apparently sensitive to aspirin. Perhaps it could act not only as a preventive measure, but also as a cure for an already existing tumor. However, the results of both molecular-biochemical and statistical studies on cancer and aspirin are often quite contradictory, which is not least due to the variety of malignant tumors themselves. Do not also forget that aspirin has a number of side effects (for example, it can cause severe gastrointestinal bleeding), which can easily make themselves felt if taken in too large quantities. Obviously, it will be possible to talk about clinical recommendations only after a series of additional biomedical studies.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru29.04.2015