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Friday, March 07, 2003One, directed by Dr. Robert Sandler of the University of North Carolina, involved 635 patients who had had colon or rectal cancer. Half took a regular, 325-milligram pill of aspirin each day, and the others took a placebo. This study ended early, because the results were so definitive: after patients had taken their assigned pills for an average of 31 months, 17 percent of those taking aspirin had new polyps, compared with 27 percent in the placebo group. The other study, directed by Dr. John Baron of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H., involved 1,121 patients who had already had polyps, which had been removed. These patients were randomly assigned to take a placebo, a regular aspirin or a low-dose, 81-milligram aspirin each day. Three years later, at the study's end, 38 percent of the patients taking the baby aspirin had polyps, compared with 47 percent of patients taking a placebo and 45 percent of those taking regular aspirin. The researchers said they were baffled by the baby aspirin's superiority to the regular aspirin in the outcome, and by the little difference in results between the regular aspirin and the placebo. The studies are here and here. Aspirin is cheap and at low doses it's well-tolerated. It's worth taking once a day if you have a history of colon polyps or previous colon cancer. Besides, it’ll decrease your risk of strokes and heart attacks, too. posted by Sydney on 3/07/2003 07:32:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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