Aspirin Linked to Lower Lung Cancer Risk in Women

LONDON - Women who take aspirin regularly more than halve their risk of developing the most common form of lung cancer, according to new research findings published on Tuesday.

Dr. Arslan Akhmedkhanov and colleagues from New York University School of Medicine questioned 14,275 women attending a mammography screening clinic in New York City between 1985 and 1991 about their use of aspirin.

The researchers then compared 81 women who went on to develop lung cancer with 808 who remained healthy and attempted to relate aspirin use to the chances of developing the disease.

By far the biggest risk factor for lung cancer was smoking history, the investigators report in the British Journal of Cancer. But after taking this into account, they found that those women who had taken aspirin regularly were substantially less likely to develop the disease.

For women who had taken the painkiller three or more times a week for at least 6 months, the risk of developing any type of lung cancer was reduced by one-third compared with nonusers.

The reduction in risk was even clearer for non-small-cell lung cancer, which accounts for about three quarters of cases. Regular aspirin users were less than half as likely to develop this form of lung cancer as nonusers.

Akhmedkhanov's team pointed out that several factors could be behind aspirin's potential anti-cancer effects. The drug reduces inflammation in a number of different ways. Aspirin can also trigger apoptosis, or programmed cell death, in which an abnormal cell--such as one that is cancerous--"commits suicide."

But they warned that regular aspirin use could occasionally result in serious side effects such as gastrointestinal bleeding and stroke. Because of this, recommendations on using aspirin for preventing lung cancer should be deferred until their findings were confirmed, they said.

"Aspirin is a remarkable drug with a wide range of health benefits, and this is the latest evidence to suggest that it could become a useful weapon against cancer," said Professor Gordon McVie, director general of Cancer Research UK, which owns the British Journal of Cancer.

"But as much as these results are encouraging, people shouldn't fool themselves into thinking that taking aspirin somehow counteracts the dangers of smoking. Everything else pales into insignificance compared with the lethal effects of tobacco," McVie said.

A trial of aspirin among British physicians published in 1988 also found that there were fewer lung cancer deaths among aspirin users compared with nonusers. However some other studies have failed to confirm this or have only shown a protective effect of aspirin in women.

Cancer Research UK said its scientists were conducting large-scale clinical trials to test whether aspirin can reduce the risk of bowel cancer among people at increased risk of the disease. There was also evidence that the drug might protect against oesophageal cancer.

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SOURCE: British Journal of Cancer 2002;87.