Blood-thinning medications, such as aspirin are extremely beneficial for certain prostate cancer patients or at least the following piece of information suggests so. Experts from the Fox Chase Cancer Center assert that aspirin can reduce the risk of cancer recurrence among some prostate cancer patients. It was also predicted that aspirin can enhance outcomes in prostate cancer patients who have received radiotherapy.
At the time of the study, scientists thoroughly scrutinized around 2000 prostate cancer patients who underwent radiotherapy at Fox Chase between 1989 and 2006. It then appeared that aspirin use diminishes the chances of cancer recurrence. About 761 men who took aspirin at or after the time of radiotherapy were allegedly less likely to experience biochemical failure than the 1380 men who didn’t take the drug. Biochemical failure seems to be an indication by the levels of PSA.
“Its possible aspirin therapy is making the radiation more effective or preventing the cancer from spreading. Hopefully, these clinical results will provide feedback to laboratory researchers to try to explain the underlying mechanism so that we can better study the clinical effects in targeted populations,†said Mark Buyyounouski, MD, MS, a radiation oncologist at Fox Chase.
On completion of 10 years, 31 percent of the men who took aspirin and 39 percent of non-aspirin users purportedly developed recurrence. Also a 2 percent improvement in 10-year prostate cancer related survival associated with aspirin use with a trend toward statistical significance was registered. However, scientists are now conducting a longer follow-up to affirm the study findings.
The study was presented at the 93rd Annual Meeting of the American Radium Society.