Some of the most cutting-edge cancer therapies involve targeted treatments used in patients with specific gene mutations, but many cost thousands of dollars a month. Not so in this case.
Aspirin Improved Survival for Some
Aspirin use was linked to survival of colon cancer patients whose tumors had mutations in the PIK3CA gene, according to the study published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Almost all patients with the mutations who took aspirin regularly were still alive five years after diagnosis, compared to just 3 out of 4 patients with the mutation who took aspirin infrequently or did not take it at all.
Between 15% and 20% of colorectal cancer patients have tumors that carry this specific mutation.
The study suggests that aspirin could dramatically extend the lives of many of these patients, but it also raises new doubts about aspirin’s usefulness in the treatment of other patients.
“Aspirin appears to work to increase survival of colorectal cancer patients if the tumor has the PIK3CA mutation, but it does not work if the tumor does not have the mutation,” says researcher Shuji Ogino, MD, PhD, of Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Aspirin Targets Cancer-Promoting Enzyme
Aspirin is often recommended to patients with colorectal cancer, but it has not been clear if all patients benefit from the treatment or just some.
Previous research suggests that aspirin inhibits PI3K, an enzyme that plays an important role in promoting cancer.
Ogino and colleagues speculated that aspirin could be specifically effective against tumors with mutations in the PIK3CA gene, and to test the theory they examined data from two large, nationwide health studies that included information on participants’ aspirin use.
The researchers looked at 964 participants in the two studies who had colorectal cancer.
Patients with this mutation who reported regular use of aspirin following diagnosis had a 46% reduction in overall death and an 82% reduction in death specifically related to colorectal cancer, compared to patients with the mutation who did not use aspirin.
Aspirin use did not appear to affect survival among patients whose tumors did not have the mutation.