Aspirin may cut breast cancer risk

From the Globe and Mail:
A new international study involving Canadian researchers is providing some of the most compelling evidence to date that anti-inflammatory drugs such as Aspirin and Advil may reduce a woman's risk of developing breast cancer.

Researchers reviewed 38 studies that involved a total of 2.7 million women from five countries and found that those who regularly took non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) had a lower incidence of breast cancer.

Past research has indicated there may be a link between the anti-inflammatory drugs and a reduced risk of breast cancer, but some of the results were inconsistent. The new study, being published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, is the largest review ever conducted of these studies and provides strong evidence of a relationship between the drugs, whose generic names are acetylsalicylic acid and ibuprofen, and a reduced breast-cancer risk.

"It is encouraging and we should definitely look into this further," said Mahyar Etminan, one of the study's authors and a scientist at the Centre for Clinical Epidemiology and Evaluation at Vancouver Coastal Health. The study was a joint effort by VCH, the University of British Columbia and the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, in Spain. ...more