Study: Aspirin improves survival of gastrointestinal cancer patients

Taking aspirin doubles the chances of survival for patients diagnosed with gastrointestinal cancer, suggests a team of researchers from The Netherlands. This is the first time that a study analysed survival data from patients with tumours in different gastrointestinal locations at the same time, the researchers claim.

The study, which involved nearly 14,000 patients, found that participants who used aspirin after their diagnosis had a chance of survival twice as high than that of those who did not use it in the same circumstances. According to the researchers, the positive impact of aspirin was seen in patients after adjusting for potential confounding factors such as sex, age, stage of cancer, surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy and other medical conditions or disorders.

Aspirin’s beneficial effect in cancer is due to its antiplatelet effect, the team says. Circulating tumour cells are believed to hide themselves from the immune system with the help of platelets, which are a blood component that stops bleeding by clumping and clogging blood vessel injuries. By inhibiting platelet function, the aspirin allows the immune system to recognise tumour cells and eliminate it. The team’s findings, which presented at the 2015 European Cancer Congress in Vienna, also identified that the most common sites for tumours in cancer patients include the colon, rectum and esophagus. According to the study’s authors, gastrointestinal cancer patients have 28 percent of survival for at least five years.

According to the study’s trial coordinator, Dr Martine Frouws from Leiden University Medical Centre, their findings will have a great impact on healthcare systems as well as patients since aspirin is a cheap, off-patent drug with relatively few side effects. “Many personalised treatments are expensive and only useful in small populations. We believe that our research shows quite the opposite – it demonstrates the considerable benefit of a cheap, well-established and easily obtainable drug in a larger group of patients, while still targeting the treatment to a specific individual,” Frouws explains.

Following the study, a multicentre, randomised and placebo-controlled trial is investigating the effect of a daily dose of 80 mg aspirin on elderly patients with colon cancer in The Netherlands. The researchers hope that they will then be able to expand the trial to include further sites in the gastrointestinal tract and provide convincing proof that more patients will benefit from aspirin treatment. Previous researches have determined that the frequent use of aspirin can prevent some cases of colorectal cancer, ischaemic heart disease and Alzheimer's disease.

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