Women over 65 ‘should take aspirin to help ward off cancer’

OLDER women taking regular low-dose aspirin could stave off serious illness such as cancer and heart disease, doctors claim.

The tipping point is age 65, according to research, because younger women may be harmed by regular aspirin use.

The study involving almost 30,000 healthy women who were at least 45 is the biggest to tackle the issue of whether the pros of taking aspirin are outweighed by the cons in women.

The new findings, published online in journal Heart, suggest the balance begins to shift with increasing age and women aged 65 and above are better off taking low-dose pills than not taking aspirin at all, the researchers said.

The study may encourage healthy older women to follow the example of increasing numbers who now take regular aspirin for health insurance.

Millions take low- dose aspirin on doctor’s orders after suffering heart problems but recent research suggests they may also gain from its anticancer properties.

Some experts believe healthy men and women who start taking aspirin around the age of 45 or 50 for 20 to 30 years could expect to reap the most benefit because cancer rates rise with age.

But there has been widespread concern that side-effects such as

‘Reignited the debate’

stomach bleeding and haemorrhagic stroke would outweigh any advantage.

Study leader Dr Frank Visseren, of the University Medical Center, Utrecht, Netherlands, said: ‘Recent findings that both daily and alternate- day aspirin can reduce cancer risk, particularly for colorectal cancer, have reignited the debate on aspirin in primary prevention.

‘Given that aspirin only modestly lowers cardiovascular risk, while increasing the risk of major gastrointestinal bleeding, the benefits for cancer could tip the balance in favour of aspirin in primary prevention.’

He said the study shows a woman’s age is the main factor to take into account. ‘ Treating only women aged more than 65 years yielded the highest net benefit.’

The latest study draws on a large group of volunteers taking part in the US-based Women’s Health Study. They were randomly assigned to take either 100mg of aspirin or a dummy tablet every other day, to see whether aspirin curbed their risk of heart disease, stroke, and cancer.

During the trial period, which lasted ten years, 604 cases of cardiovascular disease, 168 cases of bowel cancer, 1,832 cases of other cancers, and 302 major gastrointestinal bleeds requiring admission to hospital, were diagnosed.

Over the subsequent seven years, a further 107 cases of bowel cancer and 1,388 other cancers were diagnosed.

Compared with placebo, regular aspirin was linked to a lower risk of heart disease, stroke, bowel cancer, and in some women, other cancers, but only marginally so.

This slight health gain was outweighed by stomach bleeding, which affected two-thirds of the women on the drug.

However, the balance appeared to tip in favour of aspirin for women aged 65 and above because although the risk of stomach bleeding rose with age, so too did the drug’s impact on lowering the risk of bowel cancer and heart disease.

The researchers calculated that over 15 years, 29 over-65s would need to be treated with aspirin to prevent one case of cancer or heart disease and stroke.

But they concluded that blanket treatment, regardless of age ‘is ineffective or harmful in the majority of women’.