The large study reviewed here found that taking aspirin daily may reduce the risk of estrogen-receptor-positive breast cancer by about 16%.
Most breast cancers -- about 75% -- are hormone-receptor-positive. In this study, taking aspirin every day DIDN'T lower the risk of hormone-receptor-negative breast cancer. Also, taking aspirin less than daily didn't reduce the risk of breast cancer.
The more than 126,000 women who were part of this study completed a questionnaire on how often they took aspirin. About 22,000 women (18%) were taking aspirin daily at the start of the study. The women were followed for 7 years.
Aspirin is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medicine (NSAID, pronounced EN-sed). Because NSAIDs reduce inflammation, researchers thought that NSAIDs also might be able to reduce cancer risk, including breast cancer risk. Like this study, other research has looked at whether taking aspirin every day can lower cancer risk, including breast cancer risk. But the results have been mixed. Some studies (but not all) suggest that aspirin might lower the risk of certain cancers, including colon, prostate, and breast. This is the first time researchers looked at aspirin's effects on different types of breast cancer, rather than overall breast cancer risk.
Aspirin treats pain, inflammation, and fever. Many adults take a low dose of aspirin every day to lower the risk of a heart attack or stroke. Still, daily aspirin isn't right for everyone. While the results of this study are promising, there are some important things to keep in mind:
All the women in this study who took aspirin every day took different doses. So it's not clear how much daily aspirin is best to lower breast cancer risk. Most adults take between 325 and 650 milligrams of aspirin for pain or inflammation, sometimes several times a day. But people who take daily aspirin to benefit their hearts usually take a lower dose, about 81 milligrams per day. Other research suggested that this lower dose didn't reduce cancer risk.
The decrease in breast cancer risk for women who took daily aspirin was relatively small (16%). Like any medicine, aspirin has risks as well as benefits. The side effects of aspirin include bleeding, bruising, stomach upset and ulcers, and allergic reactions.
More research is needed before doctors can decide that daily aspirin can safely lower breast cancer risk.
While the results of this study offer hope, don't take aspirin every day unless you talk to your doctor first. For more information on how you can safely lower your breast cancer risk, visit the breastcancer.org Lower Your Risk section.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A daily aspirin may give women modest protection against the most common type of breast cancer, U.S. government researchers said on Wednesday.
The finding reinforced earlier research indicating regular use of aspirin might reduce the risk of so-called estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer, which makes up about three quarters of breast cancer cases.
Researchers led by Gretchen Gierach of the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, found that women who took aspirin daily cut their risk of developing this type of breast cancer by 16 percent.
"If aspirin is truly risk-reducing, it would be a very exciting finding," Gierach said in a telephone interview.
Estrogen receptor (ER)-positive breast cancer is fueled by estrogen and aspirin may interfere with this hormone's activity.
"Even though it's a small reduction in relative risk, since ER-positive breast cancers are the more common types, if this result is confirmed to be true it could have potentially a big public health impact," Gierach said.
The research involved about 127,000 women aged 51 to 72 from around the United States who were cancer-free when the study began. About 18 percent of the women were daily aspirin users. They were tracked for seven years and about 4,500 of them developed breast cancer.
The study did not find any relationship between aspirin and the less-common estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer. It also did not find any protective effect in women who took aspirin less than daily.
The study, published in BioMed Central's open-access journal Breast Cancer Research, is the latest to suggest aspirin offers benefits beyond relieving headaches and body aches and reducing fevers.
Aspirin is a common anti-inflammatory painkiller that can be used to relieve symptoms of arthritis and prevent second heart attacks and other ailments. Previous research has indicated it also may protect against colorectal cancer.
Gierach said a number of previous studies have looked at the question of aspirin and breast cancer, yielding inconsistent results. Some of the earlier work looked only at aspirin's effect on overall breast cancer without breaking it down by types of the disease, she said.
A study by Columbia University researchers in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2004 found that women who took aspirin regularly had a modestly lower risk for estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer.
"Our findings are consistent with their findings for aspirin," Gierach said of the Columbia study.
She noted that aspirin can cause serious side effects in some people including ulcers and bleeding.
"A woman would really need to talk to her doctor before starting any new regimen, and weigh the pros and cons of starting a new treatment," said Gierach, whose study is available at breast-cancer-research.com/.
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