Aspirin A Day Keeps Cancer Away

The risk of death from different cancers decreases with a daily dose of aspirin, according to a significantly important study. 
 Earlier work by the same team of scientists showed that the century-old remedy for aches and pains, long a staple of family pharmacies, can help ward off colon cancer.The new study, published in the British medical journal The Lancet, reveals for the first time that aspirin also helps protect against prostate, lung, brain, and throat cancers, among others. 

"These findings provide the first proof in man that aspirin reduces deaths due to several common cancers," said Peter Rothwell, a professor at the University of Oxford and lead author of the study. 
Rothwell and colleagues reviewed eight previous clinical trials involving a total of more than 25,500 patients. In each, some subjects took aspirin and others look-alike placebos. 
None of the studies were originally designed to measure the impact of the drug on the incidence of cancer. 
During the trials, which lasted four-to-eight years, doses of aspirin as low as 75 milligrams -- a fraction the normal dose for a headache -- cut cancer deaths overall by 21 percent. 
Risk was especially reduced after five years of treatment with the drug, by 30 to 40 percent depending on the type of cancer. 
Three of the eight trials ran long enough to examine the impact of aspirin over a period of two decades.

Source:MedIndia