Healthcare industry/Clinical studies

Healthcare industry/Clinical studies . . .

Daily Aspirin Use Linked with Pancreatic Cancer, Reuters, October 27, 2003.

A study of 88,000 nurses who took two or more aspirins per week (to prevent heart attack and stroke) for 20 years or more showed a 58 percent higher risk of pancreatic cancer. The study included a total of 88,378 women who took part in "a large and wide-ranging study of nurses and their health. Over 18 years, 161 of the nurses developed pancreatic cancer."

Although pancreatic cancer "affects only 31,000 Americans a year, ... it kills virtually all its victims within three years." Aside from smoking, taking aspirin has been "'one of the few risk factors that have been identified for pancreatic cancer,' ... according to Dr. Eva Schernhammer of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, who led the study ... 'Initially we expected that aspirin would protect against pancreatic cancer, especially since its preventive role in colorectal cancer has been well documented. However, now it appears that we need to examine the relationship more thoroughly,' Schernhammer added in a statement. 'This finding does not mean that women should no longer use aspirin. There are still important benefits to the drug; we also need other large cohort studies to confirm our finding before we can draw any conclusions.'"

"Schernhammer and colleagues presented their findings to a meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, of the American Association for Cancer Research."

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