Yale study: Aspirin may cut risk of pancreatic cancer in half

NEW HAVEN >> Taking aspirin may cut in half the risk of developing pancreatic cancer, according to a study by the Yale School of Public Health and the Yale Cancer Center.

Both low-dose and regular-dose aspirin may offer the same protection, which increases the longer aspirin is used, according to a Yale release.

Cancer of the pancreas is among the deadliest forms of cancer. According to the National Cancer Institute, there will be about 46,400 new cases in the U.S. in 2014 and more than 39,500 deaths. It is the fourth-leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the U.S., according to the NCI. Diagnosis usually comes too late to begin treatment, the Yale release said.

"It can take 10 to 15 years after the initial stages of pancreatic cancer for the disease to be diagnosed,” said the senior author, Dr. Harvey Risch, professor of epidemiology at the School of Public Health. “So, we needed to see what people took that far back in time. We considered low-dose aspirin because it has been in common use for so long, and could have been taken that far in the past.”

Low-dose aspirin (81 to 325 milligrams) is often prescribed for daily use to reduce the risk of stroke by thinning the blood.

The 2005-09 study compared low-dose and regular-dose (325 to 1,200 mg.) aspirin. The reduction in pancreatic cancer risk was 50 percent — 60 percent for those who took aspirin for more than 10 years. The study compared 362 pancreatic cancer patients and a control group of 690 without disease, the release said.

Risch offered a theory that aspirin’s anti-inflammatory properties may help reduce cancer risk. “If pancreatic cancer starts by low-level chronic inflammation that causes some pancreas cells to lose genetic control and become cancerous, then aspirin’s effect on reducing inflammation would be beneficial,” he said in the release.

The study appears in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. Other authors include Samantha Streicher and Lingeng Lu of the School of Public Health, Mark Kidd of the School of Medicine and Herbert Yu of the University of Hawaii Cancer Center.

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