Archive

Aspirin Reduces Cancer Deaths: Study

HEALTH

By up to 60 percent for some tumors.

As if headaches and heart disease weren’t reason enough. Regularly taking aspirin, a new study suggests, reduces the risk of dying of a solid tumor cancer decades later by 21 percent. In an examination of more than 25,000 patients from eight different randomized controlled trials which ended up to 20 years earlier, the death rate for gastrointestinal cancer was 35 percent lower, lung cancer 30 percent lower, colorectal cancer 40 percent lower, and esophageal cancer 60 percent lower among those who took aspirin. The dosage does not appear to matter, though the patients who regularly took aspirin over a longer period of time appear to have the most dramatic reductions in cancer death rates. Doctors caution not to embark on your own personal aspirin regimen without first consulting a doctor, as taking aspirin can also lead to stomach bleeding and brain hemorrhaging.

Read it at The New York Times

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.