Aspirin

[mtk62]

Scientists crack how aspirin might stop cancers from spreading

Scientists believe they have discovered how the cheap painkiller aspirin can stop cancers spreading.

In animal experiments they showed the drug enhanced the ability of the immune system to fight back.

The team at the University of Cambridge said it was an exciting and surprise discovery that could eventually lead to cancer patients being prescribed the drug - but not yet and people are advised against just taking the pills themselves.

Regular aspirin comes with risks and trials are still trying to figure out which patients are most likely to benefit.

Tantalising data from more than a decade ago, external showed people who were already taking a daily aspirin were more likely to survive if they were diagnosed with cancer.

But how?

It appears to centre on a moment of vulnerability for a cancer - when a lone cell breaks off from the original tumour and tries, like a seed on the wind, to spread elsewhere in the body.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1d4n119xr7o

I have been taking a low dose aspirin for years (my brother too).
Our father died of colon cancer relatively young, mum died at a similar age from a heart attack.

[wydffa]

Of interest is this study which did not find any 5 year benefit of 200mg daily compared to placebo post-colon cancer resection:
Adjuvant aspirin therapy and colorectal cancer survival
Lee, Seohyuk et al.
The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology, Volume 10, Issue 3, 184 - 185 January 14, 2025

I can only access the abstract but free full text might be online somewhere.

I too take prophylactic aspirin but experienced GI symptoms on 75mg daily. I reduced the dose to three times weekly.

The anti-inflammatory effect is quite short-lived, I believe, but the anti-platelet activity lasts for several days.

Not much research done on aspirin as little prospect of making any money from any discoveries.

[tjh290633]

I finished taking part in the Attack trial of aspirin in September when the trial ended. I've long forgotten what they were looking for. I was in another trial of aspirin before that. Had to filli in a survey each year, looking for any occurrence of the diseases of interest. My recollection is that they were looking at heart problems. I never displayed any relevant symptoms.

TJH

[mtk62]

I take enteric aspirin.
It's the Bayer product from the US that comes in 81mg size (don't ask me why it's an odd number).
The nice thing is that it comes in a 400 bottle.
I discovered that with the enteric pill you need to take it on an empty stomach and drink plenty of fluids.
This will flush it past your stomach in about 15 mins.

[Hallucigenia]

I take enteric aspirin.
It's the Bayer product from the US that comes in 81mg size (don't ask me why it's an odd number).

Because US doctors carried on measuring drugs in the traditional unit of a grain (64.8mg) for way longer than they should, and 5 grains was the traditional dose for aspirin. The low dose was a quarter of full dose = 1.25 grains = 81mg. And they've just kept it that way.

[Oswulf]

I take enteric aspirin.
It's the Bayer product from the US that comes in 81mg size (don't ask me why it's an odd number).

A standard aspirin tablet in the US is 325 mg. A quarter tablet is therefore 81 mg.

In the UK a standard tablet is 300 mg, so a quarter tablet is 75 mg.

[stevensfo]

I take enteric aspirin.
It's the Bayer product from the US that comes in 81mg size (don't ask me why it's an odd number).

Because US doctors carried on measuring drugs in the traditional unit of a grain (64.8mg) for way longer than they should, and 5 grains was the traditional dose for aspirin. The low dose was a quarter of full dose = 1.25 grains = 81mg. And they've just kept it that way.

Grains are also used in the USA to measure the weight of air gun pellets and ammunition. The UK seems to use both imperial and metric. When calculating the legal power limit of your airgun it gets soooo interesting, especially when every country has different limits and may use joules or ft/lbs.

If that's not enough, all well-known calibres are either in mm or fractions of an inch. Hence some .357 pistols will fire 9mm ammunition and vice versa.

So next time you see a bank robber brandishing his pistol, the poor guy probably has a headache and is only trying to fund his OU course in Maths.

Steve

[Paultry]

Apparently, latest information from GP daughter, bowel cancer is significantly lower incidence in those folk taking prophylactic aspirin as a platelet inactivator.

Aspirin simply prevents inflammation, long term consequences of which could well be a decrease in aberrant cell division. Paul

[richfool]

I had always understood that aspirin irritated the stomach and could cause stomach bleeding (Noted the comment above about flushing it through quickly with water, on an empty stomach). As an occasional colitis/proctitis sufferer, I had an episode of rectal bleeding, some years back after taking aspirin for a couple of days prior to a long-haul flight. Thus I am very wary of aspirin.

[XFool]

I had always understood that aspirin irritated the stomach and could cause stomach bleeding (Noted the comment above about flushing it through quickly with water, on an empty stomach).

I think the word here is proton-pump inhibitor. e.g. Pantoprazole.

[richfool]

I had always understood that as pirin irritated the stomach and could cause stomach bleeding (Noted the comment above about flushing it through quickly with water, on an empty stomach).

I think the word here is proton-pump inhibitor. e.g. Pantoprazole.

Yes, I have used those (PPI's) in the past. They also come with their own range of possible side-effects/implications, including an alleged propensity to polyps.

[bungeejumper]

I had always understood that aspirin irritated the stomach and could cause stomach bleeding (Noted the comment above about flushing it through quickly with water, on an empty stomach).

Correct, the stomach lining doesn't like its acidic properties, and it can bleed or even develop ulcers if you take aspirin too much and too regularly. (The same goes for diclofenac, aka Voltarol.)

That's why a previous poster mentioned enteric aspirin, which comes in a protective coating that won't dissolve in the stomach. (Think of it as a short-stay car park). Instead, it releases its payload in the long-term car park, aka your small intestine, where it won't cause so many problems.

That's not to say that you can't have any bleeding probs in the 27 feet of the small and then the large intestine that still lie head of it. And, as everybody knows, blood in those departments should always be reported to the doc. Not least, because the five or six different conditions that can cause blood in the stool do include bowel cancer, which I've had. But in 15 out of 16 cases it's less serious than that, and probably piles or IBS.

Either way, if aspirin causes you problems, opt for one of the many alternatives. Simples.

BJ

[stewamax]

Correct, the stomach lining doesn't like its acidic properties, and it can bleed or even develop ulcers if you take aspirin too much and too regularly. (The same goes for diclofenac, aka Voltarol.)

Worth noting that oral diclofenac (Voltarol et al) is no longer available from pharmacies OTC in the UK - it was removed from the OTC list in January.