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Last Updated: Apr 30, 2008 - 2:42:44 PM |
WEDNESDAY April 30, 2008 (foodconsumer.org) -- The U.S. government has found a new potential medical application for aspirin. This time, the drug may be taken to prevent breast cancer, Reuters reported citing a study published in BioMed Central's open-access journal Breast Cancer Research.
The study led by Gretchen Gierach of the National Cancer Institute found women who took aspirin daily were 16 percent less likely to contact breast cancer. Aspirin is a drug commonly used to treat headaches and body aches and fevers.
A health observer affiliated with foodconsumer.org cautioned that the study is not a trial and a cause and effect relation was not established, meaning taking aspirin may not necessarily be the real factor that reduced risk of the disease in the observed group.
He also suggested other preventatives like vitamin D may be better used than aspirin which can cause adverse effects in some people including ulcer and bleeding even if aspirin proves to be protective against breast cancer.
In the study, the researchers followed 127,000 women aged 51 to 72 in the United States who were cancer-free when entering the study for an average of 7 years. Of the participants, about 18 percent were taking aspirin daily and during the follow-up, 4,500 were diagnosed with breast cancer.
The researchers found an apparently 16 percent reduction in risk of estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer in those who took aspirin daily. But no association was between aspirin and the less-common estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer. Those who took the drug less frequently than daily were not found at reduced risk.
Although the study could not establish a causal relation between aspirin and breast cancer risk, aspirin is known to interfere with the estrogen's activity. This means there is a possibility that taking aspirin did reduce the risk to some degree.
The current study essentially confirmed an early study by Columbia University researchers in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2004 which found women who took aspirin regularly were at a moderately reduced risk of estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer.
But caution needs to be exercised. "A woman would really need to talk to her doctor before starting any new regimen, and weigh the pros and cons of starting a new treatment," Gierach was quoted as saying.
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