Painkillers also work on cancer
HEAD and neck cancer sufferers could more than triple their chances of survival by taking painkillers every day, research suggests.
Aspirin and ibuprofen were found to increase survival rates from 25 per cent to 78 per cent for head and neck tumours.
The University of California San Francisco has found a “strong clinical advantage” of painkillers to deal with the mutation.
Writing in the
the authors said this was the first study to show a “strong clinical advantage” of regular NSAID use for head and neck cancer patients with mutations in the PIK3CA gene.
“Our results suggest that the use of NSAIDS could significantly improve outcomes for not only head and neck cancer patients but also patients with other cancers that contained the PIK3CA mutation,” professor of head and neck surgery and senior author of the paper Dr Jennifer Grandis said.
“The magnitude of the apparent advantage is strong and could potentially have a positive impact on human health.” The Sun