Asprin to Prevent Cancer

Aspirin may be more effective at preventing cancer deaths than previously thought.
NBC Nightly News (12/6, story 7, 2:20, Williams) reported, "In the advertisements for aspirin, on this and other broadcasts, they for years have called it a wonder drug, and a good many doctors believe it is something of a wonder." What's more, "millions of people take a half aspirin every day, for example, for heart health." Now, a newly published paper in The Lancet indicates that "aspirin may be much more effective than anyone knew at helping prevent cancer deaths."
The "stunning finding came while researchers were studying 25,000 people taking daily aspirin to prevent heart disease," ABC World News (12/6, story 3, 2:15, Sawyer) reported. "It turns out aspirin was doing something else, reducing the death rate from cancer as well." In fact, "in the trials where people have taken aspirin four, five, six, seven years on average, the risk of dying of cancer was reduced by about 25%."
So, asked the CBS Evening News (12/6, story 5, 2:00, Smith), "Should everyone take low-dose aspirin? Today the American Cancer Society said no and that 'it would be premature to recommend people start taking aspirin specifically to prevent cancer,'" considering that "even low dose aspirin can lead to dangerous internal bleeding. Still, evidence that it might help fight cancer is intriguing for doctors."
Researchers at Oxford reached that conclusion after examining "the cancer death rates of 25,570 patients who had participated in eight different randomized controlled trials of aspirin that ended up to 20 years earlier," the New York Times (12/7, A16, Rabin) reports. "Participants who had been assigned to the aspirin arms of the studies were 20 percent less likely after 20 years to have died of solid tumor cancers than those who had been in the comparison group taking dummy pills during the clinical trials, and their risk of gastrointestinal cancer death was 35 percent lower. The risk of lung cancer death was 30 percent lower, the risk of colorectal cancer death was 40 percent lower, and the risk of esophageal cancer death was 60 percent lower."
Only "one-third of people in the analysis were women -- not enough to calculate any estimates for breast cancer," the AP (12/7) points out. And, "there appeared to be no benefit to taking more than 75 milligrams daily -- roughly the amount in a European dose of baby aspirin and a bit less than the baby aspirin dose in the US."
In addition, "aspirin was not found to [significantly] influence the risk of death from pancreatic, prostate, bladder, kidney, brain, or blood cancers," the Los Angeles Times (12/7, Maugh) reports. Yet, lead investigator Dr. Peter M. "Rothwell noted that most of the subjects stopped taking aspirin at the end of the study -- or, alternatively, many in the control group began taking it -- potentially confusing the results." He added that "'it's likely that if people had carried on taking aspirin,' the benefit would have been greater."