"When many cures are offered for a disease, it means the disease is not curable" -Anton Chekhov
''Once you tell people there's a cure for something, the more likely they are to pressure doctors to prescribe it.'' -Robert Ehrlich, drug advertising executive.
"Opinions are like sphincters, everyone has one." - Chris Rangel
Baby aspirin comes through again, this time in preventing colon polyps. The study was presented at a conference yesterday, so it's impossible to examine it closely, but it certainly sounds promising. It would have been more promising if there had been a greater difference in polyps between the aspirin and the placebo groups, but aspirin is cheap and pretty safe at the small doses used, so it would probably be worth recommending. I suspect that there is a genetic difference at work that predicts who responds to aspirin and who doesn't when it comes to the polyps. Maybe someday we will be able to identify that gene and aim the aspirin therapy at those who would benefit from it. Earlier this month,
sulindac , another anti-inflammatory drug failed to show much of an influence on polyp formation (but it was in a much smaller sampling of patients) and research continues on two of the newer, and much more expensive anti-inflammatories,
Vioxx, and Celebrex. posted by Sydney on
4/08/2002 07:34:00 AM
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