last updated 8th December 05
By 4ecotips

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Dr Mark Matfield, scientific consultant, Association for International Cancer Research, writes, the origins of aspirin go all the way back to the founding father of medicine, Hippocrates, who lived in ancient Greece and described the use of willow bark tea for treating headaches and fever. However, it was not until the 1820s that chemists extracted salicin from willow bark. Acetylsalicilic acid - or aspirin - was developed as a version that was easier on the stomach.

Although its original uses were as a painkiller and to reduce fever or inflammation, in the 1940s a doctor in California noticed that men regularly prescribed aspirin had not suffered any heart attacks. Research later confirmed that taking regular small doses of aspirin could reduce the risk of heart attacks.

By the 1980s another use was added when aspirin was licensed as a means of preventing both heart attacks and strokes. The latest research has also found that there is a much lower rate of Alzheimer's disease amongst people who take aspirin regularly.

More recently, evidence has been accumulating that it may also reduce the risk of cancer. Many studies have indicated that aspirin can reduce the risk of colon cancer. One recent study examined people who had previously had pre-cancerous polyps removed from their colon. Taking aspirin reduced their risk of recurring by up to one third.

CUTS LUNG CANCER
A couple of years ago a team of American researchers studied a group of 14,000 women and found that taking aspirin regularly cut the risk of lung cancer by half. Last year, another American study found that taking aspirin for ten years could reduce a woman's risk of getting breast cancer by 20%. The similar drug ibuprofen was even more effective, with a reduction of 50%.

More recently a team of Italian researchers who studied a group of nearly a thousand cancer patients found that taking aspirin appeared to reduce the risk of mouth and throat cancer by two thirds.

Another study found a significant drop in the number of men getting prostate cancer when they took aspirin every day for five years. The older the men were the greater the drop. For men between 50 and 60, it was only a 12% drop - in other words only one eighth fewer men got the cancer.

However, amongst men aged between 70 and 80, the drop was over 80%. This means that it was reducing their risk of prostate cancer five-fold.

So you might wonder, with all this evidence that aspirin can reduce the risk of cancer, why aren't doctors advising us all to take it every day? The answer is to do with the fact that aspirin can have side-effects in some people.

BLEEDING & ULCERS
Using aspirin to prevent cancer would mean hundreds of thousands of people would take the drug every day for years, to prevent a few hundred cases of cancer. Amongst those hundreds of thousands there would also be many hundreds and possibly thousands who suffered from bleeding or ulcers caused by the aspirin.

To get around this problem scientists in the UK and USA - some of them funded by the Association for International Cancer Research (AICR) - are trying to find out exactly how aspirin protects against cancer. It may be possible to design aspirin-like drugs that are even more effective at preventing cancer but without the side effects experienced by some people who take it regularly.

Aspirin may be an incredible drug, but no drug with side-effects could be called a 'wonder-drug'. However, research being done at the moment might well result in a real wonder drug to prevent cancer and many other diseases.

Published by kind permission of the Association for International Cancer Research
www.aicr.org.uk