Regular use of aspirin after colorectal cancer diagnosis may reduce the risk of cancer death, report investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women's Hospital.
In the August 12 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, the study's authors also find that the aspirin-associated survival advantage was seen primarily in patients with tumors expressing the COX-2 enzyme, a characteristic of two-thirds of colorectal cancers.
"While previous studies by our group and others showed that aspirin and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs reduce the risk of developing colorectal cancer, this study is the among the first to show that aspirin can also improve survival in patients who have already been diagnosed with colorectal cancers. Moreover, the benefit appeared to be especially strong among patients with cancers that express COX-2," says Andrew Chan, MD, MPH, of the MGH Gastrointestinal Unit, the study's lead author. "This is an important first step toward developing targeted approaches to improving patient outcomes."
Many previous studies have shown that regular use of aspirin and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs reduces the risk of developing colorectal cancer. In 2007, the same MGH/DFCI research team found that the benefit only applied to tumors overexpressing COX-2, an enzyme believed to drive tumor growth and known to be inhibited by aspirin and related drugs. To test their hypotheses that aspirin would also improve the survival of patients diagnosed with colorectal cancer, again through its inhibition of COX-2, the researchers compiled data from two ongoing prospective research studies – the Nurses Health Study (NHS) and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (HPFS). Both studies gather comprehensive health information on their participants every two years; data are then analyzed for associations between factors such as medication use and the incidence of several diseases.