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ASPIRIN, the collection of articles on its many surprising benefits

 

PRIME BENEFITS:

 

1)      VERY SIGNIFICANTLY LOWERS THE INCIDENT OF HEART ATTACKS BY REDUCING CLOTTING

2)      CUTS COLON-CANCER DEATH RATE BY 50%

3)      MARKEDLY REDUCES THE INCIDENT OF BREAST CANCER

4)      MARKEDLY REDUCES CESAREAN SECTION

More bad pharma:  First the warning about stomach bleeds are grossly exaggerated, and those who have an issue have the H. Ptylori bacteria, and should get the cause of their heart burn treated with antibiotics.  Secondly there is a tolerance phenomena for the low dose, thus at one year its reduction of heart attacks is minimal and it is too weak to significantly reduce the incidence of cancer through its stimulation of the necrosis of the necrosis fact which causes the orderly disposal of abnormal cells (pre-cancerous and indolent cancer cells) .  REMEMBER THAT PHARMA PROFITS FROM ILLNESS.

 

Aspirin slashes colon-cancer death rates

 

People who regularly take aspirin cut in half their risk of dying from colon cancer, according to the largest, most definitive epidemiologic study to investi­gate this link.  The finding suggests a relatively inexpensive strategy for bat­tling a scourge that currently claims the lives of about 50,000 Americans annually.

 

The new work also adds weight to the findings of a much smaller study re­ported earlier this year.  Although that retrospective study of about 6,000 men and women did not address cancer-sur­vival rates, it did indicate that regular aspirin use may reduce the incidence of colon cancer (SN: 3/16/91, p.166).

 

Spurred by those findings, epidemiolo­gist Michael J. Thun and his colleagues at the American Cancer Society in Atlanta correlated aspirin use and colon-cancer deaths among the 662,424 men and women they had been tracking since 1982 as part of the society’s Cancer Prevention Study.  Upon entering the study partici­pants had answered a questionnaire cov­ering a range of behavioral, dietary and lifestyle factors, including frequency of aspirin use during the past year.

 

The risk of dying from colon cancer decreased with increasing aspirin use, Thun’s team reports in the Dec. 5 NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE.  Colon-cancer death rates among the most fre­quent users—-those taking aspirin 16 times or more per month—were 60 percent as high as that seen in the study’s aspirin abstainers.  And when the re­searchers controlled for risk factors such as diet, obesity and family history of colon cancer, the risk dropped to 50 percent of the colon-cancer death rate of the aspirin abstainers.

 

“It’s an interesting finding,” says epi­demiologist John A. Baron of Dartmouth Medical School in Hanover, N.H.  He notes, however, that the new study does not prove that aspirin itself helps prevent colon cancer.  For examp1e, he points out that side effects of frequent aspirin use, such as Intestinal bleeding may have caused members of this subgroup to seek medical attention more frequently than other volunteers thereby increasing the likelihood that any developing colon can­cer would receive early diagnosis.  And early diagnosis increases the chance that a person with colon cancer will survive.

 

A large, randomized trial in which some people take aspirin and others take placebo pills would provide firmer evi­dence of aspirin’s protection against co­lon cancer.  But such a gold-standard study might be difficult to conduct, Baron says, because people who know about aspirin’s widely publicized heart benefits (SN: 7/27/91, p.55) might balk at the prospect of receiving placebo pills in­stead.  *

 

For now, Baron and Thun remain cau­tious about advocating regular aspirin use for cancer prevention, since it can cause potentially dangerous side effects.**   At the same time, they note that aspirin may provide secondary anticancer bene­fits for people who already take it to manage arthritis pain or to reduce the risk of heart disease.

 

Even if epidemiologists can demon­strate that aspirin fights colon cancer, there remains the question of how it exerts this effect.  Like other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), aspi­rin inhibits the synthesis of compounds called prostaglandins, which spur body cells including colon cells to proliferate.  Thun suggests that aspirin might prevent rampant cell division a key attribute of cancers by interfering win prostaglandin production.

 

A number of laboratory studies have shown that aspirin and other types NSAIDs inhibit the growth of chemical induced colon tumors in rats and mice.  Other studies have shown that an NSAI called sulindac can shrink large-bow polyps in people.  Such polyps, though benign, can develop into cancers, Thun notes.  Taken together, the individual pieces of evidence provide scientists wit compelling reasons to further explore the link between aspirin and colon cancer, Thun contends.          KA. Fackelman, Science News, 1994, p. 374.***

 

*   Two other problems, is first that it is easy because of taste to identify aspirin.  Second, the just prior mentioned objection of early medical attention would still be a contravening variable.  However, if the study also recorded those who were diagnosed with color cancer this objection would be laid to rest.  In fact in the afore mentioned study of 662,424 participants recorded colon cancer, this objection would be laid to rest. 

**  This problem as well as the identification of the placebo are laid to rest with the use of enteric (coated aspirin), for it digests in the intestines, which is alkaline.  Since aspirin is a weak acid, its acidity is neutralized, and thus as is to be expected the enteric aspirin does not cause stomach bleeding—and there is little risk of intestinal bleeding. 

***  Subsequent studies have confirmed this prophylactic result and the science behind it.    

 
 
 
 

A PREEMPTIVE STRIKE AGAINST CANCER,  Aspirin cuts risks gives a big boost to a slew of promising drugs

DRUG COMPANIES ARE pouring billions of dol­lars into developing new targeted therapies for cancer, and so far none are close to a cure. But there is a countervailing force to their quest: the search for widely available drugs that could stop cancer from starting. Chemoprevention, as the field is called, just got a win with the news that aspirin, already used to prevent heart disease, reduces the risk of the most common form of breast cancer.

No one is ready to recommend that women start popping aspirin every day, in part because the drug can cause gastro­intestinal side effects. But the report, in the May 26 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, does raise the hope that women already taking aspirin to prevent heart disease may be getting another valuable benefit. “I think this is a very important paper,” says Dr. Waun Ki Hong, a pioneer in chemopre­vention at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

Hong says a number of drugs have now been shown to suppress cancer, including aspirin and similar non­steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID5) such as ibuprofin. In fact, aspirin has already been proven effective in preventing colon cancer.  A stream of studies over the last few yeas has also focused on aspirin’s potential against breast cancer, but with mixed results.  The JAMA study by researchers from Columbia University, is noteworthy because it shows which type of breast cancer would most likely be prevented—and why.

 

DOWNSIDE TO DAILY DOSES

THE RESEARCHERS studied 3,000 Long Island women, half with breast cancer and half without, and analyzed how often they took aspirin, ibuprofen (such as Advil), and acetaminophen (such as Tylenol). They found that 20.9% of the women with breast cancer had taken as­pirin regularly for six months or longer before they were diagnosed, compared with 24.3% of the women in the control group. That adds up to a 20% lower risk of breast cancer for aspirin users vs. nonusers. The drug was most effective

against tumors that are dependent* on the hormones estrogen and progesterone, reducing the risk of these types of cancers by 26%. Hormone-dependent tumors ac­count for 60% to 70% of all breast cancer cases. Ibuprofen had a weaker effect, while acetaminophen, which is not an NSAID, offered no protection.

The Columbia scientists based their study on 10 years of lab research. They knew that aspirin blocks an enzyme in the blood called COX-2 that stimulates estro­gen production. Testing its effect in mice, Dr. Andrew J. Dannenberg of Weill-Cor­nell Medical College, a co-author of the JAMA report, found that aspirin reduced both estrogen and breast tumors.

Still, cancer experts say the Columbia study wasn’t flawless. It only followed the women for a year, and was retro­spective—the outcomes were based on participants’ reports of their own behav­ior and open to bias, a problem with many such studies. But more money is being poured into prospective trials, which give a drug to a large population over a number of years to see what hap­pens. The National Cancer Institute is conducting a seven-year trial with 22,000 women to see whether tamox­ifen, a breast cancer treatment, or Eli Lil­ly & Co.’s Evista, an osteoporosis drug, is better able to prevent breast cancer. Re­sults are due in 2006.

The NCI says there are more than 40 other drugs in chemoprevention tri­als, ranging from old standbys like aspirin to new targeted therapies such as AstraZeneca PLC’S Iressa, a lung cancer treatment approved in 2003. M.D. Anderson doctors are testing Iressa and Tarceva, a similar drug by Genentech and OS1 Phar­maceuticals, in heavy smokers in an attempt to prevent lung cancer.

There can be a downside to giv­ing a pill every day to prevent dis­ease. Merck & Co.’s anti-baldness drug, Proscar, was able in a large tri­al reported last year to reduce prostate cancer by 25%, but the men on Proscar who did develop cancer tended to get more deadly tumors, possibly because of the drug.

Still, cancer specialists are en­couraged. “Oncology is two decades behind cardiology when it comes to disease prevention, but we are be­ginning to get smarter about it,” says Dannenberg. The 212,000 women likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer in the U.S. this year can only hope so.

-By Catherine Arnst in New York

PAGE 48,  Business Week ; June7, 2004

 

*THE CANCER IS NOT DEPENDENT ON ESTROGEN OR PROSTOGLANDINS, BUT RATHER HAS ON THE SURFACE OF THOSE CELLS RECEPTORS FOR ESTROGEN.  WHEN STIMULATED BY ESTRONGEN THEY DIVIDE MORE RAPIDLY.  THUS A LIFE THREATENING BREAST CANCER (link to explanation of how cancer becomes life threatening) WILL GROW AND SPREAD FASTER.  IN OTHER WORDS, THE CLOCK HAS BEEN PUSHED FORWARD FOR THOSE WITH THE RIGHT SET OF MUTATIONS.  Thus the results are suspect.  In long-term estrogen studies, after a moderate first couple of year surge, breast cancer rates for those on estrogen fell slightly below the control group and the two became essentially equal. .  For an account of the poor media work on hormone replacement therapy (HRT). --JK 

 

LOW-DOSE ASPIRIN SHOWN TO PREVENT PREGNANCY-INDUCED HYPERTENSIVE DISEASE

 

      The recent meta-analysis of aspirin and pregnancy-induced hypertension by Imperiale and Petrulis caught our interest, and we examined this issue from the standpoint of clinical decision making.  Since the meta-analysis included studies that were not randomized, not blinded, or used dipyridamole in addition to aspirin, we excluded data from those studies.  Using data from the remaining studies that addressed cesarean sections, we found that 5.6% of the aspirin group required cesarean sections, compared with 23.9% of the control group.  The maximum aspirin costs is $4.60 and the cost difference between cesarean and vaginal birth of $3,014.   Calculating 5.6% c-section plus the cost of aspirin yields $173 per patient, for those without aspirin, 23.9% or $720.

 

Science News, Dec. 11, 1991, Vol. 266 No. 22

 

 

Drug companies are about making a profit.  Medicinally valuable substances that are not profitable such as aspirin are not pushed by drug companies.  Information about, for example, about aspirin’s other uses generally are not widely known.  Moreover, the drug companies in seeking to promote their expensive alternative to aspirin, state that their product is better.  They create expectations in the public who then expect something for arthritis other than aspirin, such as Naproxin.  Doctors to please their patients and often because of being mislead by the advertisements of drug companies proscribe the more expensive alternatives.  Harm is done by taking a substance that is not as safe and has not been shown to have the other beneficial qualities, the reduction of colon cancer by 50%.

 

Drug companies should not be allowed to exert influence upon the research of the products they are having tested in hopes of getting FDA approval for, nor should they be given control of the information (research results).  

 

 

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