Aspirin could dramatically cut cancer risk - recommended for 50 to 64 year olds

Aspirin could dramatically cut cancer risk, according to biggest study yet

The Guardian, Wednesday 6 August 2014

 

 

An aspirin a day could dramatically cut people's chances of getting and dying from common cancers, according to the most detailed review yet of the cheap drug's ability to stem disease. More than 130,000 deaths (in the UK) would be avoided over a 20-year period if Britain's 50- to 64-year-olds took a daily aspirin for 10 years, because the beneficial effects continue even when the aspirin is stopped, the authors say.

A research team led by Professor Jack Cuzick, head of the centre for cancer prevention at Queen Mary University of London, concluded that people between 50 and 65 should consider regularly taking the 75mg low-dosage tablets.

Cuzick said that taking aspirin "looks to be the most important thing we can do to reduce cancer after stopping smoking and reducing obesity, and will probably be much easier to implement". In a briefing to journalists, the scientist added that he had been dosing himself for the last four years, keeping the tablets beside his bed. "I take aspirin as part of a bedtime ritual every day and I can achieve that quite easily," he said.

However, to obtain the newfound benefits of the drug, people would have to take aspirin for at least five years and probably 10, the review said. Aspirin was originally developed as a painkiller and treatment for fever and inflammation, but more than a century after it was first synthesised from willow bark, researchers have found more medical uses for it.

It has been demonstrated to reduce the risks of heart attacks and strokes as well as the chances of some cancers. But the big question has been whether the benefits outweigh the harms, because aspirin can cause stomach bleeds, which could be potentially fatal in some people.

Concluding that the benefits outweighed the risks, Cuzick's team, writing in the cancer journal Annals of Oncology, said that by taking low-dose aspirin every day for 10 years, bowel cancer cases could be cut by about 35% and deaths by 40%. Aspirin could reduce rates of oesophageal and stomach cancers by 30% and deaths from them by 35% to 50%.

However, taking aspirin every day for 10 years increases the risk of stomach bleeds among 60-year-olds from 2.2% to 3.6%. In about 5% of those who have a stomach bleed, it could be fatal. Cuzick added that there was evidence that this side-effect could be more common in people who have the bacterium Helicobacter pylori in their stomach, which also causes peptic ulcers. He said people considering embarking on a regime of daily aspirin should talk to their GP and it might be possible to be tested first.

A second risk is stroke. Aspirin is already given to some people to reduce their risk of heart attacks or ischemic stroke, caused by blood clots, which it does by thinning the blood. But it is likely to worsen a haemorrhagic stroke, caused by bleeding in the brain.

The study also shows that 10 years of aspirin reduces heart attacks by 18% and deaths by 5%, but although it reduces stroke numbers by 5%, there is a 21% increase in deaths.

All the cancers in which aspirin has a beneficial effect have some lifestyle causes – from smoking in lung cancer to alcohol in oesophageal cancer and obesity in all of them. Taking aspirin, said Cuzick, "should not be seen as a reason for not improving your lifestyle". The drug, however, would reduce the cancer risk even in people who have a healthy lifestyle, he said.

Increasing numbers of people in middle age are already being prescribed cholesterol-lowering statins to reduce their risk of heart attacks and strokes. Recently there has been an outcry over the "medicalisation" of the population and concern about side-effects – which trial data suggest are less common and less serious than those in aspirin. Cuzick said there was no evidence of any interaction between the two drugs. "In many people, taking both of them is probably a good idea," he said.

However, Cancer Research UK (CRUK)warned that people should speak to their GP before starting on daily aspirin. The charity said it would like to see more research on who should and should not be taking it.

"Aspirin is showing promise in preventing certain types of cancer, but it's vital that we balance this with the complications it can cause – such as bleeding, stomach ulcers, or even strokes in some people," said Dr Julie Sharp, head of health information at CRUK.

"Before aspirin can be recommended for cancer prevention some important questions need to be answered, including what is the best dose and how long people should take it for. And tests need to be developed to predict who is likely to have side-effects. "Given the continued uncertainty over who should take aspirin, Cancer Research UK is funding a number of trials and research projects to make the picture clearer," she said.

Aspirin also has a smaller preventive effect on other major cancers, according to the research paper. It could reduce the number of lung cancers by 5% and deaths by 15%. It could cut prostate cancers by 10% and deaths by 15%, and breast cancers by 10%, with a reduction in deaths of 5%. There would be an overall 9% reduction in the number of cancers, strokes and heart attacks suffered by men and a fall of 7% in women.

Cuzick acknowledged that people generally did not like taking pills for a long period, although, he said, some were "more than happy to take multivitamins for many, many years without any clear evidence of benefit. It is a regular habit." 

As a generic drug – Bayer's patent ran out in the 1930s – there are no profits to be made by big pharmaceutical companies from the estimated 100bn tablets taken around the world every year.

The science – and the warnings

What does the study find?

The risk of both developing and dying from digestive-tract cancers – those of the bowel, stomach and oesophagus – was reduced by about a third in people who took low doses of aspirin daily for 10 years. Cases of breast, prostate and lung cancer were reduced by about 10%, though no effect was seen on other cancers.

What do scientists recommend? For aspirin's anti-cancer benefits to kick in, people needed to have taken aspirin for at least five years from the ages of 50 to 64. Most of the research was based on low 75mg doses. The longer the drug was taken, the better its preventive effects, until the age of 65, after which there was an increased risk of internal bleeding. The study found no benefit in taking aspirin before the age of 50. Scientists recommend that people consult their GP before taking daily aspirin to prevent cancer.

How does aspirin prevent cancer?

There are two theories. First, inflammation in the body causes cells to divide, which increases the risk of them mutating into cancerous forms.

Because aspirin reduces inflammation, it lowers the risk of cancerous cells developing.

Second, cancer cells can piggyback on blood platelets, which help the blood to clot. Aspirin thins the blood by making platelets less sticky, which may also make it harder for them to carry cancer cells and so spread the disease.

What are the risks?

Aspirin can cause bleeding in the stomach and bowel. This can be serious, especially in the over 70s, but rarely affects younger people unless they have an underlying condition.

"My personal advice would be that everyone 50 to 64 should consider taking aspirin. You should talk to your GP first to see if you've got any of the major risk factors for bleeding, but if not I think the benefits substantially outweigh the risks," said the senior author, Prof Jack Cuzick.

Nishad Karim

The Poor Pay the True Cost of Renewable Energy

Government is not about doing what feels right. Good government is about what is right. 

Just because you support something 'nice' that gives you a warm, inner glow doesn't mean it's good for people or for the planet. Instead, governing a nation requires a government to be analytical in its assessment of an issue, considering both short-term and long-term implications and then deciding whether a particular decision is good for a majority of Australians or not.

If you are genuinely interested in the debate about renewable energy and the recent games being placed in the Australian Senate, please read what Alec Piper, a retired financial advisor has written:

The Al Gore/Clive Palmer circus in late June foretold the end of Australia's carbon tax but reopened debate about action Australia should take regarding global warming. What is the best path forward?

With the world as far away as ever from reaching an agreed position, Australia has little to gain by being a pace setter, especially if proposed action does more harm than good.  Professor Bjorn Lomborg, economist, former director of the Environmental Assessment Institute in Copenhagen is founder of the Copenhagen Consensus, "which seeks to establish priorities for advancing global welfare".

Professor Lomborg  "accepts the reality of anthropogenic global warming" but has unconventional ideas about the best path forward.  Back in April he made the following comments.

Renewables pave path to poverty
THE Australian government recently released an issues paper for the review of the renewable energy target. What everyone engaged in this debate should recognise is that policies such as the carbon tax and the RET have contributed to household electricity costs rising 110 per cent in the past five years, hitting the poor the hardest.

A Salvation Army report from last year found 58 per cent of low-income households were unable to pay their electricity bills on time. Lynne Chester of the University of Sydney estimated last year that 20 per cent of households are now energy poor: "Parents are going without food, families are sitting around the kitchen table using one light, putting extra clothes on and sleeping in one room to keep warm, and this is Australia 2013."

What is true in Australia is true globally. According to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, "Climate change harms the poor first and worst." But we often forget that current policies to address global warming harm the world's poor much more.

Solar and wind power was subsidised by $65 billion in 2012. And because the total climate benefit was a paltry $1.5bn, the subsidies essentially wasted $63.5bn. Biofuels were subsidised by another $20bn, with -essentially no climate benefit. All of that money could have been spent on healthcare, education, better roads or lower taxes.

Forcing everyone to buy more expensive, less-reliable energy pushes up costs throughout the economy, leaving less for other public goods. The average of macroeconomic models indicates the total cost of the EU's climate policy will be $US310bn a year from 2020 until the end of the century.

The burden of these policies falls overwhelmingly on the world's poor, because the rich can easily pay more for their -energy. In the US, well-meaning and well-off environmentalists often cavalierly suggest petrol prices should be doubled or electricity exclusively sourced from high-cost green sources.

That may be OK in affluent suburbs, where residents reportedly spend just 2 per cent of their income on petrol. But the poorest 30 per cent of the US population spends almost 17 per cent of its after-tax income on petrol.

Similarly, environmentalists boast that households in Britain have reduced their electricity consumption almost 10 per cent since 2005. But they neglect to mention that this reflects a 50 per cent increase in electricity prices, mostly to pay for an increase in the share of renewables from 1.8 per cent to 4.6 per cent.

The poor, no surprise, have reduced their consumption by much more than 10 per cent, whereas the rich have not reduced theirs at all.

Over the past five years, heating a home has become 63 per cent more -expensive in Britain while real wages have declined. About 17 per cent of households are now energy-poor - they have to spend more than 10 per cent of their income on energy; and, because the elderly are typically poorer, about a quarter of their households are energy poor. Pensioners burn old books to keep warm because it is cheaper than coal; they ride on heated buses all day, and a third leave part of their homes cold.

In Germany, where green subsidies will cost $US35bn ($37.6bn) this year, household electricity prices have increased 80 per cent since 2000, causing
6.9 million households to live in energy poverty. Wealthy homeowners in Bavaria can feel good about their inefficient solar panels, receiving lavish subsidies essentially paid by poor tenants in the Ruhr who cannot afford solar panels, but still have to pay more for power.

In Greece, where tax hikes on oil have driven up heating costs 48 per cent, more and more Athenians are cutting down park trees, causing air pollution from wood burning to triple.

It is even worse in the developing world, where three billion lack access to cheap energy. They cook and keep warm by burning twigs and dung, producing indoor air pollution that causes 3.5 million deaths a year - by far the world's biggest environmental problem.

Access to electricity could solve that while allowing families to read at night, own a refrigerator or use a computer. It would also allow businesses to operate more competitively, creating jobs and economic growth.

Consider Pakistan and South Africa, where a dearth of generating capacity means recurrent blackouts wreak havoc on businesses and cost jobs. Yet funding new coal-fired power plants in both countries has been widely opposed by well-meaning Westerners and governments.

Instead, they suggest renewables. This is hypocritical. The rich world gets just 1.2 per cent of its energy from hugely expensive solar and wind technologies, and we would never accept having power only when the wind was blowing. In the next two years, Germany will build 10 coal-fired power plants.

In 1971, 40 per cent of China's energy came from renewables. Since then it has lifted 680 million people out of poverty using coal. Today, China gets a trifling 0.23 per cent of its energy from wind and solar. Africa gets 50 per cent of its energy today from -renewables - and remains poor.

New analysis from the Centre for Global Development shows that, investing in renewables, we can pull one person out of poverty for about $US500.

But, using gas electrification, we could quadruple that. By -focusing on our climate concerns, we deliberately choose to leave more than three out of four people in darkness and poverty.

Addressing global warming requires long-term innovation that makes green energy affordable. Until then, wasting enormous sums of money at the expense of the world's poor is no solution at all.

If you have the stomach for more on this topic please visit: http://stopthesethings.com/2014/04/08/bjorn-lomborg-high-cost-renewables-hit -the-poorest-the-hardest/

Biggest nuclear disaster in Australia ever - except it wasn't!

Don't believe what the media reports every time there is a 'nuclear incident' involving the mining of uranium in Australia.

On December 7, 2013, a tank storing processing liquid burst at the Ranger uranium mine in the Northern Territory. Some 1300 cubic metres or 1.3 million litres of liquid flowed out of the leach tank and, according to various media reports:
* Mirarr Traditional Owners ..... have described it as the biggest “nuclear disaster in Australia ever.”
*  according to ......Kevin Buzzacott, ....president of the Australian Nuclear Free Alliance ..."Kakadu should send shivers up the spines of all Australians but I do not understand why it has not made the television news. What has occurred in Kakadu is scary.”
*  Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation, which represents the local Mirrar people.... told the Sunday Territorian that people in communities like Mudginberri, which is about 7km downstream of the Ranger mine, no longer felt safe.
* according to the Green Left Weekly:  “The time for mining a problematic and polluting mineral in a World Heritage area is over."
* " This is up to a million litres of radiological material in the form of an acid exploding from a drum, bending a crane, twisting metal all around it, pouring down into stormwater drains, with 20 or so people ordered to evacuate,'' said Mr O'Brien.
*  Photos of the site taken by the Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation and supplied to the ABC suggest material did spill onto grassy ground at the site.

But what the findings of the independent federal Supervising Scientist show is that these expressions of fear and implied severe environmental impacts were wrong. The report into the incident states:

It is the conclusion of the Supervising Scientist that the leach tank failure has not resulted in
any adverse impacts to human health or the surrounding environment, including Kakadu
National Park.
Dose to workers involved in the cleanup activities was low and of no consequence to human
health. No increase in airborne radionuclide concentrations as a result of the incident was
detected at the Supervising Scientist monitoring stations in Jabiru town or at Jabiru East,
indicating no impact to residents in the surrounding area.
Chemical and biological monitoring by the Supervising Scientist in Magela Creek did not
detect any effects related to the incident. Limited groundwater data available in the area of the
spill, and the six week timeframe for Energy Resources of Australia Ltd to commence the
requested groundwater monitoring program, restricted the level of groundwater analysis
which could be undertaken. Sufficient information was available, however, to conclude that
due to the generally compacted nature of soils in the plant area only a small volume of
contaminants may have entered the groundwater and this would not have any significant
impact on groundwater quality in the offsite environment.

So the claims made by various anti-nuclear, anti-uranium, political or vested interest groups are largely without basis.

Probably the only claim that has some foundation in truth is that of the Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation which said that people in communities like Mudginberri downstream of the Ranger mine no longer felt safe. The emotional, untruthful and exaggerated claims made by anti-nuclear protestors were designed to create and enforce in the minds of otherwise uninformed or normally disinterested people a fear of uranium mining, regardless of the accuracy and truthfulness of those claims.

The people and organisations that used the December spill as an opportunity to push their anti-development agenda and scare people should now apologise to Northern Territorians and the people of Australia for creating unjustified fear about an operation which, while not perfect, has not caused harm to the natural environment nor to the people living downstream of the mine.