As it has for decades, aspirin continues to amaze the medical world with its record of successfully fighting and preventing serious, often fatal disease.
According to Reuters, a study of more than 4,000 nurses showed that those who took aspirin — usually to prevent heart disease — had a 50 percent lower risk of dying from breast cancer and a 50 percent lower risk that the cancer would spread.
“This is the first study to find that aspirin can significantly reduce the risk of cancer spread and death for women who have been treated for early stage breast cancer,” said Dr. Michelle Holmes of Harvard Medical School, who led the study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
“If these findings are confirmed in other clinical trials, taking aspirin may become another simple, low-cost and relatively safe tool to help women with breast cancer live longer, healthier lives,” Holmes added in a statement.
Reuters stated the following:
Holmes and her team studied 4,164 female registered nurses taking part in the Nurses’ Health Study, an ongoing analysis of a wide range of health issues.
They started in 1976, looking at who took aspirin, watching for breast cancer and all causes of death until 2006. Over this time, 341 of the nurses died of breast cancer.
Women who took aspirin two to five days a week had a 60 percent reduced risk of their cancer spreading and a 71 percent lower risk of breast cancer death. Six to seven aspirins a week lowered the risk of spread by 43 percent and the risk of breast cancer death by 64 percent.
Even more revealing about aspirin’s medicinal power, the researchers wrote that, “Aspirin has relatively benign adverse effects compared with cancer chemotherapeutic drugs and may also prevent colon cancer, cardiovascular disease, and stroke.”
There is a warning, however: Aspirin can cause stomach bleeding so it should not be taken without a doctor’s supervision.
