Could Aspirin Double GI Cancer Survival Rates?
Post-diagnosis aspirin improves survival in patients with gastrointestinal (GI) tumors, according to results from the first study to examine survival data from patients with tumors in different GI locations at the same time.
While previous research has already shown that frequent use of aspirin can helpt to prevent bowel cancer, little data is available on the drug’s effect on other GI cancers.
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For their study, researchers examined data from 13,715 patients diagnosed with various GI cancers between 1998 and 2011.
Using drug dispensing information from the Institute for Drug Outcomes Research, they found that 30.5% of patients used aspirin before being diagnosed with GI cancer, 8.3% used the drug only after being diagnosed, and 61.1% did not take aspirin. The most common locations of cancer were the colon and rectum. Median follow-up was 48.6 months.
Overall, after adjusting for factors including sex, age, stage of cancer, chemotherapy, and other medical conditions, participants who used aspirin after their diagnosis had twice the chance of survival as those who did not use aspirin.
The researchers attribute the beneficial effects seen with aspirin use to the drug’s antiplatelet effects, allowing the immune system to recognize circulating tumor cells.
“Medical research is focusing more and more on personalized medicine, but many personalized treatments are expensive and only useful in small populations,” they concluded.
“We believe that our research shows quite the opposite – it demonstrates the considerable benefit of a cheap, well-established and easily obtainable drug in a larger group of patients, while still targeting the treatment to a specific individual.”
—Michael Potts
Reference:
European Cancer Congress. Post diagnosis aspirin improves survival in all gastrointestinal cancers [press release]. September 25, 2015. http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=156736&CultureCode=en.