Aspirin doubles life expectancy in gastrointestinal cancer patients

Taking a daily dose of aspirin has been found to double survival rates in patients with gastrointestinal cancers, shedding new light on what the anti-inflammatory drug can do.

The researchers are presenting the results of the study this week at the 2015 European Cancer Congress in Vienna, Austria.

Researchers say that their analysis showed that there was a significant increase in overall survival among patients who did take aspirin compared to those who did not.

The impact of aspirin on survival was seen after adjusting for factors such as gender, age, stage of cancer, treatments, and other medical conditions that could have influenced death rates.

According to trial co-ordinator Dr Martine Frouws, from Leiden University in the Netherlands, “Now we would like to analyse tumour material from these patients”.

After finding that aspirin has extended the lives of the cancer patients, the scientists would now like to find out if aspirin has any effect on the tumors.

“Through studying the characteristics of tumours in patients where aspirin was beneficial, we should be able to identify patients who could profit from such treatment in the future”, she said. Platelets are a blood component whose function is to stop bleeding by clumping and clogging blood vessel injuries.

Dr Lesley Walker, director of cancer information at Cancer Research United Kingdom, said: “It’s far too early to recommend that people take aspirin to protect themselves from these cancers”. They point to the antiplatelet effect of aspirin, which they believe makes the tumor cells more visible to the immune system. While this is very useful when we get hurt, it’s thought that tumors may also hide from our immune system within these platelets and remain undetected.

The study, which involved almost 14,000 patients, found that participants who used aspirin after their diagnosis had a chance of survival twice as high than that of those who did not use it in the same circumstances.

However, evidence that aspirin could be used as an effective part of cancer treatment has been mounting. “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”, Frouws explains. Professor Nadir Arber, who is the congress’s spokesman, said, “Aspirin may serve as the magic bullet because it can target and prevent ischemic heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, the three major health catastrophes in the third millennium”.

A multicentre, randomised, placebo-controlled trial is now investigating the effect of a daily dose of 80 mg aspirin on OS of elderly patients with colon cancer in The Netherlands.