Aspirin, often used to help prevent heart attacks and strokes, also appears to reduce the risk of the most common type of breast cancer— that is, tumors whose growth was fueled by estrogen or progesterone. Approximately 70% of women with breast cancer have the hormone receptor-positive type.

The women who used aspirin at least four times a week for at least three months were almost 30% less likely to develop hormone-related breast cancer than women who used no aspirin. Aspirin had no effect on the risk for hormone receptor-negative tumors.

Researchers believe that aspirin works by interfering with the body’s production of estrogen.

Many studies have relied on subjects’ recollections of how often they took aspirin. A more rigorous study has linked the use of low-dose aspirin and a reduced risk of growths that can eventually turn into colon cancer. That study involved randomly assigning patients to take aspirin or placebos, the gold-standard method.

For now, it is not recommended that all women take aspirin, because it can cause side effects such as stomach bleeding. Although the findings are exciting, more research is needed before doctors recommend aspirin to prevent breast cancer.

Women can use aspirin and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) for years without suffering renal function problems, according to data from the Nurses’ Health Study. Acetaminophen is another story, but not a markedly worse one.

Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard University studied information from 1,697 women who responded to a questionnaire in 1999. The women’s blood samples, which were collected in 1989 and 2000, were also evaluated. The main outcome was change in estimated glomeru-lar filtration rate over 11 years.
canadian pharmacy generic viagra

The researchers observed no association between lifetime use of aspirin or NSAIDs and the risk of decline in renal function, even among women who had consumed 3,000 g or more of the drug. In contrast, women who had consumed 100 g or more of acetaminophen over their lifetimes seemed to be at greater risk of losing “an important proportion” of their renal function, compared with those who had taken less than 100 g. Even so, most women who had consumed 3,000 g or more of acetaminophen did not have significant renal dysfunction, and the magnitude of the association depended on the formula used to estimate renal function. There was no apparent interaction between acetaminophen and aspirin.

Combining aspirin with the pain medication valdecoxib (Bextra®, Pfizer) may increase the risk of blood clots that can trigger a heart attack or stroke. In December, the FDA warned that valde-coxib should not be used in candidates for heart bypass surgery.

Low-dose aspirin can slow the development of atherosclerosis in mice, but it seems ineffective once the disease is established. Adding a COX-2 inhibitor does not enhance the beneficial effects of aspirin; instead, the combination of valde-coxib and aspirin produces potentially dangerous changes in the makeup of the plaque within the arteries. The added COX-2 inhibitor causes changes that—if they occurred in humans—would result in a loss of stability of the plaque, making it more likely to rupture and activate clotting, causing heart attack or stroke.
official canadian pharmacy

Researchers say aspirin prevents atherosclerosis by blocking COX-1. Adding a COX-2 inhibitor may cause the beneficial effects of aspirin to be lost. This could increase the chance of developing dangerous blood clots.

Researchers caution that these results should not be taken out of context; the patients were at high risk for heart problems because they were undergoing heart bypass surgery. However, they say the findings represent a class effect of the COX-2 inhibitors.