Eureka! Here's how aspirin really can beat cancer



Most 'miracle cures' have two things in common: they are usually ruinously expensive and, equally often, they do not work.

The panacea, the cure for all ills is, like the perpetual motion machine, the philosopher’s stone or the elixir of youth, a nice name for something which does not exist.

That, at least, was the case until this week, when yet another extraordinary study has emerged demonstrating that if any chemical in humanity’s medical chest deserved the epithet ‘wonder drug’ it is the humble aspirin.

The most amazing drug in the world: Research shows that aspirin has far more health benefits than first thought

Costing less than 1p a dose, aspirin has for decades been prescribed as a pain killer, anti-inflammatory and prophylactic against heart disease. Aspirin relieves diabetes, cures some pregnancy problems and may even stop you going senile. Humans consume 40,000 tonnes of acetylsalicylic acid (the chemical name for aspirin) a year, making it by far the world’s most popular drug.

Impressive enough, but now a study, published in the Lancet this week, shows that taking just one low-dose pill a day, containing 75mg of the drug, cuts the risk of developing a whole host of common, nasty cancers from those of the prostate and lung, to oesophageal and brain tumours.

This effect is not marginal; rates were slashed by half for some cancers and the longer people take the drug the more effective it becomes. In fact, after five years of taking daily low-dose pills, death rates fell by 34 per cent for all cancers. No wonder experts are now calling aspirin ‘the most amazing drug in the world’.

It is impossible to exaggerate how important this finding is. ‘We were surprised,’ says the lead author on the study, Professor Peter Rothwell of the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. ‘If anything, we have probably underestimated the anti-cancer effect’.

One of the most striking things about the study is the nature of the cancers involved. Tumours of the brain, lungs and gut are, in the words of Professor Rothwell, ‘the cancers that you really don’t want to get’. Virtually incurable, the brutal reality is that most people who get these diseases die, and quite quickly.

As a science journalist, I am not sure I have come across anything quite so dramatic in terms of potential health benefits in my career. Wonder drugs come and go, but this seems to be the real deal. Aspirin, it seems, has the potential to slash the rates of some of the worst cancers, which are responsible for prematurely ending the lives of tens of thousands of middle-aged people every year. It is hard to imagine any expensive new drug or surgical technique having such a dramatic impact.

Of course there are caveats. Aspirin can cause stomach bleeding and people with a history of gastrointestinal problems, particularly ulcers, should either avoid aspirin or only take it in combination with anti-acid drugs.

In fact, simply drinking a glass of milk with your aspirin may be enough to mitigate the side-effects in the vast majority of people and may even boost the anti-cancer effects.

So how does it work? Aspirin has been around for more than 100 years (in fact the pain-relieving effects of willow bark, a natural source of salicylate chemicals, have been known about for millennia) and it has become something of a medical myth that no one understands how aspirin does it.

Aspirin’s role in protecting against heart attacks and stroke is now relatively well-understood. It thins the blood, reducing the likelihood of clotting and its anti-inflammatory effect, caused by the inhibition of an enzyme called Cox-2 which normally produces inflammatory chemicals implicated in heart disease and stroke. The anti-inflammatory effect also minimises the risk of damage to blood vessels and the tissues surrounding them.

But how it prevents cancer is more mysterious. There is a suggestion that aspirin may help repair damaged DNA directly. Inflammation is thought to be a key process in the formation of tumours as well as heart disease. And salicylate appears to assist ‘apoptosis’, or programmed cell death, of cells which might grow into tumours. It is quite possible that other anti-inflammatory drugs, such as ibuprofen, will be found to have similarly beneficial effects.

In fact, aspirin’s anti-cancer properties may, at least in part, help explain one of the biggest mysteries of medicine – the modern cancer epidemic. In rich countries the lifetime risk of developing cancer now stands at 40 per cent and cancer rates are rising in poor countries as well. Until recently, it was commonly assumed that much if not all of this rise could simply be explained by the fact that we are living longer – cancer is mostly a disease of old age – and better diagnosis.

But some recent studies show that we really are seeing a dramatic increase in the incidence of cancer. When scientists at Manchester University examined hundreds of Ancient Egyptian mummies they found only one obvious case of the disease in the ancient tissues. Cancer rates have been rising dramatically even since the advent of modern medicine and the decline in death rates seen in the last 100 years.

Many point the finger at pollution, the modern diet and perhaps lack of exercise as the cause. Our bodies are bombarded with thousands of synthetic chemicals, from pesticides and air pollutants to food additives and hormone-tainted meat and water that were simply absent in the pre-industrial world.

But there is another intriguing suggestion: as well as introducing various artificial chemicals into our bodies, modern farming techniques are known to strip salicylates from the plants we eat, the natural chemical that forms the basis of aspirin and which plants evolved as a natural protector against diseases.

In the wild, plants produce large quantities of salicylate, to help them repair after damage by pests or severe weather. Our desire for perfect, shiny fruit and vegetables means we protect our food crops from the ravages of nature, and so their flesh is poor in what is being dubbed by some ‘Vitamin S’.

So it could be that part of the reason that we get more cancer is that our diet is salicylate-deficient – and taking aspirin helps remedy this. Interestingly this Lancet study provides an – indirect – boost for the organic food lobby.

So should we all go out and start taking aspirin? Should we add it to the water supply or to our bread? It is actually quite hard to avoid these dramatic conclusions, although all the scientists involved in this study are naturally cautious. ‘That’s up to other people,’ says Prof. Rothwell. The problem, as ever, would be that if everyone started taking aspirin tomorrow some people would die (of bleeding) as a result, but we would never notice the people who did NOT get cancer 20 years down the line. There would, perversely and inevitably, be an anti-aspirin backlash.



But if you are middle-aged, have any family history of cancer or heart disease and no history of gastric problems and have a strong desire not to die in your 50s or 60s of a nasty cancer, it would seem to be something of a no-brainer.

Professor Rothwell, aged 46 with three young children, takes aspirin. So do many thousands of other medics and scientists – and this before the news of the cancer study broke.

The irony about aspirin is that were it to be discovered today, it would almost certainly not be licenced – clinical trials would reveal the side effects long before the much more dramatic benefits became clear, and no drug firm would touch the stuff with a bargepole.

It seems we have the most robust attitudes of an earlier age to thank for the fact that you can go and buy the most amazing drug in the world for a penny a pop.



