Bowel¹ cancer patients who take daily aspirin² could cut their chance of dying from the disease by about a third, experts believe.

专家们相信，肠癌患者每天服用阿司匹林能将死亡率降低1/3。

A study in the British Journal of Cancer looked at 4,500 bowel cancer patients living in The Netherlands.

All of the patients on aspirin were taking a low dose - 80mg or less a day - something already recommended for people with heart disease.

But experts say it is too soon to start routinely offering it for bowel cancer.

A wealth of evidence already suggests aspirin might prevent certain cancers from developing in the first place. And more recent work suggests it might also work as a cancer therapy - slowing down or preventing a cancer's spread.

But the drug can also have unpleasant and dangerous side effects, causing irritation³ of the stomach lining⁴ and internal bleeds in a very small minority of patients.

The findings

In the study, which spanned nearly a decade, a quarter of the patients did not use aspirin, a quarter only took aspirin after being diagnosed with bowel cancer, and the remaining half took aspirin both before and after their diagnosis⁵.

Most of the patients on aspirin had been taking it to prevent cardiovascular（心血管的） disease-related problems like stroke or heart attack.

Taking aspirin for any length of time after diagnosis cut the chance of dying from bowel cancer by 23%.

The patients who took a daily dose of aspirin for at least nine months after their diagnosis cut their chance of dying from the disease by 30%.

Taking aspirin only after bowel cancer had been detected had a bigger impact on reducing mortality compared with when aspirin was taken before and after diagnosis - reducing death risk by 12%.

This may be because those who took aspirin and still got bowel cancer had a particularly aggressive form of tumour⁶ that did not respond as well to aspirin, say the researchers.