Danny Buckland, Reposted On Saturday, January 15, 2010
It’s usually found in an unobtrusive white bottle in most bathroom cabinets. But the humble aspirin is being hailed as a medical miracle.
Breakthrough research this week showed aspirin could drastically reduce the risk of dying from many common cancers.
It’s staggering range – helping headaches through to critical conditions – means it could save millions of lives.
The British study proved that low doses of aspirin can cut death rates from cancers by about 30%, and up to 60% with prolonged use.
Professor Peter Rothwell’s team at the John Radcliffe Hospital, in Oxford, astonished the world with results from eight long-term studies involving 26,000 patients.
It reported that after five years, cancer death rates were cut by an average of 34% and up to 54% in gastrointestinal cancers. The results were seen across lung, pancreatic and oesophagus cancer as well as, to a lesser extent, brain cancer.
It is “the most amazing drug in the world”, according to Professor Alastair Watson, a consultant gastroenterologist at the University of East Anglia. “Penicillin has probably saved more lives but in terms of broad applications I don’t think anything comes close to aspirin. And it doesn’t cost much,” he said.
“Developed from willow bark, it started out as a painkiller which was good for fever and rheumatism. Then, about 20 years ago, it became clear that it was good for heart diseases and stroke.
“We then got to a position where virtually every patient who has had a heart attack, heart surgery, a stroke or problems with circulation in their legs is on aspirin. But to everyone’s astonishment and delight aspirin is going that extra mile.”
For pain relief, it penetrates the pain centres in the brain and switches them off while also reaching the nerve endings to neutralise the pain response mechanism. For cancers, it inhibits the damaging rogue cells by cutting off their blood supply. “It has been around for 100 years and was sold before the times of clinical trials and it is interesting to ask if it would be licensed today because of its side effects,” added Professor Watson.“Official government figures show it caused some 22 deaths in one year.
Many more had serious illness and most hospitals admit people with aspirin side effects almost every day. To put those figures into perspective, 70,000 people died from the effects of heroin in the same period.
“Aspirin is not the most dangerous drug but you cannot say it is completely safe.”
Experts caution against all middle-aged people – who stand to benefit most from the cancer application – immediately popping pills on a daily basis, and advise anyone with health concerns to get advice from their GP. But for a million Brits, the everyday ritual of swallowing a baby aspirin has life-saving implications.
“It’s about a quarter the dose you take for a headache,” said Mick Henderson, director of the Aspirin Foundation, the information service supported by Bayer, the company that developed aspirin.
He said: “Most GPs will put patients on to an aspirin if they have had a heart attack but more and more are putting them on to aspirin if they believe they are at risk from being overweight, smoking, stress or have a family history of heart attack at a relatively young age. So it can be taken even before heart attack."
“A lot of people are simply saying it is a wonder drug.”
Source: Daily Mirror Pic: Simon Stratford
No comments:
Post a Comment