WIKIMEDIA, SAULIGNORegularly taking aspirin for years may protect users people from some types of gastrointestinal (GI) cancers, especially colorectal cancer, according to Harvard researchers presenting their work yesterday (April 19) at the annual American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) meeting being held in Philadelphia. But long-term aspirin use may also come with an elevated risk of adverse effects, such as GI bleeding, cautioned Yin Cao, a research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health who coauthored the study. “You need to consider the risk of [prolonged aspirin use],” Cao told The Scientist during an AACR poster session where she presented the work.
“Previous studies of aspirin and cancer have been limited in terms of their size, length of follow-up, or ability to examine aspirin use in the context of other lifestyle factors,” she said in a statement. “Our research provides critical information regarding the full constellation of potential benefits of aspirin use, at a range of doses, timing, and duration of use, within a large population of individuals.”
Cao and her colleagues considered data collected from more than 100,000 men and women who had enrolled in separate studies in the 1980s. The researchers found an overall 5 percent decreased risk for all cancers in people who reported taking two or more aspirin tablets per week. This decrease was driven mostly by a 20 percent reduction in risk ...
