Aspirin Can Reduce Cancer Risk

In a research carried out at Oxford University, involving a sample of 25,000 patients (mainly from UK) , it has been found out that patients taking Aspirin have a lesser risk than others. It is a common finding now, that aspirin has a strong bleeding effect on Gastrointestinal Tract (see SDT article), but still according to the latest research the weightage of Aspirin's beneficial effects regarding Cancer is higher than the risks it poses towards bleeding.

The gist is that,in a patient, when cells divide (metastasis which goes abnormally multiplicative for cancer patients) there is a risk of faulty DNA in daughter cells. Aspirin enhances the suicidal or repair of these.
This particular study, which was published in Lancet (medical journal especially for Oncology i.e Cancer Related Science) declared that  "The risk for reduction in cancer by aspirin  was 20% over 20 years. For individual cancers the reduction was about 40% for bowel cancer, 30% for lung cancer, 10% for prostate cancer and 60% for esophageal cancer. The reduction in pancreas, stomach & brain cancer were difficult to quantify  because of smaller number of deaths"

The study was led by Peter Rothwell and involved his colleagues as well. They published the results after eight trials.