Technology Slice Blog

Aspirin Daily Helps Fight Cancer - Taking a daily aspirin may do more than lower your heart disease risk -- it could lower your risk of death from cancer as well. So says a new review of studies published today. Still, many doctors say more must be known about the reasons for the possible benefit before their advice to their patients will change. Researchers found that after five years, cancer death rates were 21 percent lower in patients assigned to take an aspirin a day -- a reduction in cancer risk that persisted for 20 years -- according to pooled data on a total of 25,570 individuals participating in eight randomized studies. The meta-analysis, led by Peter M. Rothwell of John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, England, was published online in the journal The Lancet. The researchers called the results "the first reliable evidence that aspirin prevents non-colorectal cancer in humans" -- a possibility to which earlier studies had pointed -- though the preventive effe...