Taking aspirin regularly \u201chas been shown to reduce the incidence (of) a variety of cancers,\u201d including of the colon, noted the authors of a study in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. But at the same time, the drug may render the cancer \u201cmore difficult to manage therapeutically,\u201d they added. \u201cThis indicates a potential trade-off.\u201d<\/p>\n
A growing body of research has shown that daily micro-doses of aspirin taken for at least five years can slash the risk of cancer later in life. Rates of prostate, throat and non-small-cell lung cancer all drop off significantly, with the incidence of colon cancer cut by up to half. Other studies, meanwhile, have tested the impact of aspirin directly on cancer cells in the laboratory, showing that the common painkiller can slow the rate of cell division and boost cell death.<\/p>\n
But scientists do not yet understand the mechanism at work, or know whether aspirin might have as-yet-undiscovered effects on cancer spread. To find out more, researchers led by Dominik Wodarz of the University of California at Irvine, who conducted these earlier experiments, investigated whether the drug may cause dangerous cancer mutations.<\/p>\n
Indeed, aspirin did boost the cancer\u2019s ability to produce aggressive, mutant cells that are drug-resistant, they found. The results could challenge the protocol for aspirin use in cancer prevention. It is now critical to ensure that aspirin delays \u201cthe onset of colo-urectal cancer by a sufficient amount of time to avoid the negative effects of this trade-off,\u201d the study authors said.<\/p>\n
People who take the drug, especially in middle age, should be regularly screened for cancer, they added. Roughly half of adults in the United States take small doses of 80 to 325 milligrammes to ward off cardiovascular disease. In Britain the figure is about 40%. The general public has not yet recognised the potential benefits for cancer prevention, notes Peter Rothwell, a professor at the Centre for Prevention of Stroke and Dementia at the University of Oxford. \u201cIt takes a while, and more replication studies, to convince people that the benefits are real,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Taking aspirin regularly \u201chas been shown to reduce the incidence (of) a variety of cancers,\u201d including of the colon, noted the authors of a study in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. But at the same time, the drug may render the cancer \u201cmore difficult to manage therapeutically,\u201d they added. \u201cThis indicates a potential […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4180,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4179"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4181,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4179\/revisions\/4181"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}