Word: colon
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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MEDICINE Another use for aspirin: preventing colon cancer...
...wonder drug has made a wondrous comeback. In recent years it has been shown to be a powerful inhibitor of heart attacks and strokes -- a virtue neither acetaminophen nor ibuprofen can match. And last week came preliminary evidence of another major benefit: aspirin reduces the risk of death from colon cancer, a disease that kills 50,000 Americans a year. A major study by the American Cancer Society, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that people who took 16 aspirin tablets or more each month (or equivalent doses of related but lesser known anti-inflammatory drugs...
...assigned to take aspirin, it is possible that those who did were generally more health conscious than average and less likely to develop cancer in the first place. Or perhaps aspirin users had more internal bleeding than the others -- a common side effect of aspirin -- and therefore had their colon cancers detected early and cured readily. The study did not measure the actual ( incidence of colon cancer, just deaths resulting from...
...also responsible for stimulating the production of the stomach's protective lining of mucus, which explains why too much aspirin can cause gastric distress and bleeding. Aspirin's ability to prevent strokes and heart attacks stems from its disruption of a prostaglandin that promotes blood clotting. As for colon-cancer prevention, it is possible that aspirin inhibits substances that play a role in cell proliferation. At least one such prostaglandin has been identified in lab animals. If aspirin does have this effect, it might prove useful in reducing the risks of other cancers as well...
...women, half of whom will be randomly assigned to take low doses of aspirin every other day for at least five years. Originally designed to see if aspirin can prevent heart disease in women as it does in men, the study will also look at rates of colon cancer, migraines, stroke and gum disease...