Daily dose of aspirin can help fight cancer

CANCER patients have a greater chance of surviving the disease if they take a small daily dose of aspirin, a major review suggests.

In a new roundup of 71 studies involving 520,000 people, researchers at Cardiff University discovered that the number of patients still alive was 20 to 30 per cent greater if they had regularly taken the drug.

The spread of cancer to other parts of the body was also substantially reduced in patients using aspirin.

Peter Elwood, an honorary professor at Cardiff University, who directed the study, said: “The use of lowdose aspirin as a preventive in heart disease, stroke and cancer is well established, but evidence is now emerging that the drug may have a valuable role as an additional treatment for cancer too.

“Patients with cancer should be given the evidence now available and be helped to make their own judgment on the balance between the risks and the benefits of daily low dose.”

People in the studies were taking low-dose aspirin, which is 100mg a day, or around one third of a regular tablet. The research showed that in colon cancer a man of 65 who took a regular aspirin would have a prognosis similar to a man five years his junior who did not take the drug.

For a woman of similar age with colon cancer, addition of aspirin could lead to a prognosis comparable to someone four years younger.

Almost half the studies in the review were of patients with bowel cancer, and most of the other studies were of people with breast or prostate cancer.

There were very few studies of patients with other less common cancers, but the researchers concluded that the pooled evidence suggested a wide benefit.

Clinical trials in which cancer patients are specifically given aspirin alongside their treatment are ongoing and are due to report in a few years. The research was published in Plos One Medicine.