A daily dose of aspirin, an anti-inflammatory drug, can double the life expectancy of patients suffering from gastrointestinal tract cancers, a new study shows.

Gastrointestinal (GI) tract cancers affect the oesophagus, gall bladder, liver, pancreas, stomach, small intestine, bowel (colon and rectum) and anus.

A team of scientists from Leiden University in the Netherlands made the conclusion based on data collected from 14,000 cancer patients who had been diagnosed with GI cancers. They found that those who took the painkiller every day were twice as likely to still be alive after four years compared with those who did not.

Gladwell Kiarie, an oncologist and senior lecturer at the University of Nairobi, said that the drug has benefited patients with premalignant polyps (hereditary colorectal cancer syndromes). It is known to increase a patients’ life expectancy and reduce the risk of death by up to 40 per cent.

“Aspirin can reduce the incidence of colorectal cancer among patients who use it,” Dr Kiarie said, adding that in randomised controlled trials, the drug has been seen to mostly benefit patients who are already taking it due to cardiovascular (heart) disease.

But this is not the first time that the over-the-counter drug has been linked to prolonging the life of cancer patients.

A report published last year suggested that a daily tablet could help cancer patients living longer and even prevent the disease from taking hold in the first place.
The new report adds to the previous findings.

Five more years

While making their presentation at the recent 2015 European Cancer Congress in Vienna, the scientists from Leiden University reported that across all types of cancers studied, 28 per cent of patients survived for at least five years.

“Given that aspirin is a cheap, off-patent drug with relatively few side-effects, this will have a great impact on health care systems as well as patients,” they said.

Aspirin is often used to treat pain, fever, and inflammation. It is sometimes used to treat or prevent heart attacks, strokes, and chest pain (angina).

According to 2012 data from Globocan-Kenya Medical Research Institute, cancers of the colon and stomach accounted for 13.8 per cent (23.2 per 100,000) of all cancers. Globocan provides estimates of the incidence of mortality and prevalence from major types of cancer at national level, for 184 countries of the world.

While the drug has been noted to benefit the patients, researchers have also warned that only when they have access to a lot more data will it be possible to recommend it to the wider public.

This is because aspirin is known to increase the chances of internal bleeding as it thins blood.

“We must ensure that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Although I put my patients with polyps [which are likely to develop to colon cancer] on aspirin, I am careful to watch out for bleeding,” said Dr Kiarie.

Currently, no other drug has been discovered that prevents colon cancer in the same way that aspirin does. However, further studies are underway to check for any noticeable patterns when the treatment is applied to different types of cancer.