News articles are posted here for your information only and are not altered in any way from the source. The source and the date of news are also included. It by no means reflects our own views on the topic. Sometimes we may have comments on certain news reports and these comments are clearly labelled as so.

News--
Aspirin May Help Prevent Hodgkin's Disease- Study
Feb 18, 2004

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Regular aspirin users may be protecting themselves against a form of cancer called Hodgkin's lymphoma as well as against colon cancer and heart disease, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.

In the latest report to suggest that aspirin has effects that could prevent cancer, a team at the Harvard School of Public Health found that patients who took two or more aspirins a week over five years reduced their risk of Hodgkin's lymphoma, a type of immune system cancer.

Ellen Chang and colleagues questioned 565 patients with Hodgkin's lymphoma and 679 healthy people about their use of aspirin and related drugs called non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agents, or NSAIDS.

They found the regular aspirin users were only 60 percent as likely as non users to be in the cancer group.

To their surprise, they found that regular users of acetaminophen, a non-aspirin pain reliever, nearly doubled their risk of the cancer -- but said it may have been because patients started taking the drug to control their as-yet undiagnosed cancer symptoms.

Chang's team said the findings must be confirmed in bigger studies but said it could be aspirin actively prevents the immune disruption involved in Hodgkin's disease.

"Given the extensive inflammation and immune dysregulation accompanying Hodgkin's lymphoma, an attractive hypothesis is that anti-inflammatory drugs guard against the onset of disease," they wrote in their report, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

"If aspirin use is indeed found to protect against Hodgkin's lymphoma, this relationship could afford insight into the pathogenesis of the disease and offer possible clues toward its prevention," they added.

(C) 2003-2008, ActiveHerb Technology, Inc. All rights reserved.
ActiveHerb Technology, Inc., 10855 Sorrento Valley Road, Suite 204, San Diego, CA 92121