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Taking regular low doses of aspirin may lower the risk of contracting pancreatic cancer, according to research conducted at Yale University.
The study, published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, surveyed data on 362 people with pancreatic cancer and 690 people without the disease.
According to the study, men and women who took low-dose aspirin regularly had 48 percent reduction in their risk for developing pancreatic cancer and protection against pancreatic cancer ranged from 39 percent reduction in risk for those who took low-dose aspirin for six years or less, to 60 percent reduction in risk for those who took it for more than 10 years.
Harvey A. Risch of epidemiology in the Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, said that older studies of aspirin use have been clouded by the use of [regular- or high-dose] aspirin for pain relief from conditions that themselves might be related to the risk for pancreatic cancer.
Risch added that only recently have people been using low-dose aspirin for long enough times [to prevent cardiovascular disease] that the use might bear on risk of pancreatic cancer development and people who are considering aspirin use to reduce the risk for cardiovascular disease can feel positive that their use might also lower their risk for pancreatic cancer, and quite certainly wouldn’t raise it.
Agencies/Canadajournal
This is crazy. When my mother died of pancreatic cancer, I did a lot of reading on the subject. There are no known factors that affect pancreatic cancer. There are no risk markers or behaviors. There are no routine tests, and the only test to detect it is an enzyme test that also reads positive for ovarian cancer. The average time from onset to diagnosis is 10 weeks–and the average diagnosis is Stage 4, inoperable. It is practically insane to suggest that aspirin reduces the risk of pancreatic cancer since nobody knows what the actual risk is. This is irresponsible and will lead people to false hopes and false confidence.