Aspirin might reduce recurrence risk for breast cancer survivors

[SoCalDem]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-sci-aspirin17-2010feb17,0,4190955.story

Aspirin might reduce recurrence risk for breast cancer survivors, study finds
Women who took aspirin two to five days per week were 60% less likely to have a recurrence and 71% less likely to die from the disease. But researchers caution that the results are preliminary.


By Thomas H. Maugh II

February 17, 2010


Women who take aspirin regularly after their breast cancer goes into remission are about 50% less likely to suffer a recurrence or to die from the disease, according to new findings from the ongoing Nurses' Health Study. The results, reported Tuesday in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, are surprising because at least five large studies have shown that taking aspirin regularly has no effect on the risk of developing breast cancer in the first place. The study's authors described the findings as surprising and worthy of follow-up, but even they cautioned that survivors shouldn't yet begin prophylactic aspirin use.

The new results could be because the process of metastasis of breast cancer is different than that of initiation and could thus be susceptible to influence by aspirin. Or it could be simply that there is some other shared characteristic of women who took aspirin that produced the beneficial effect. Dr. John Glaspy, a breast cancer specialist at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, called the results extremely interesting. "If true, it would certainly be a relatively easy, inexpensive, potentially safe intervention for women who have had breast cancer," he said.

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[TexasObserver]

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