A little aspirin could prevent bowel cancer

A little aspirin might do wonders in preventing bowel cancer, that too with fewer side effects, a new study has said.

A five-year retrospective study led by Malcolm Dunlop of the University of Edinburgh, UK, compared the aspirin habits of 2,800 people with cancer and 3,000 without.

The team found that the risk of getting cancer was 25% lower in those who had been taking 75 milligrams of the drug daily compared with those who had not.

If everyone in the UK were taking a low dose of aspirin in 2007, the latest year for which incidence data on bowel cancer is available, it would have prevented 16 cases per 100,000.

This small reduction in risk is comparable to that from earlier studies in which the doses were much higher.

Andrew Chan of Harvard Medical School in Boston is, however, not convinced.

"I still believe that lower doses are not as effective as higher ones,” New Scientist quoted Chan as saying.

His 20-year follow-ups on 80,000 women and 50,000 men showed that daily doses of 325 milligrams worked best for preventing bowel cancer.