Daily aspirin dose 'for everyone over 45'
Everyone aged over 45 should consider a small daily dose of aspirin to help protect themselves against heart disease and cancer, a panel of experts suggested yesterday.
Evidence is building that the benefits for many healthy middle-aged and older people “far outweigh” the side effects, according to the academics.
In particular, individuals at higher risk from the country’s two biggest killers would be helped by taking the painkiller as a preventive medicine, they added.
The experts were speaking at the Royal Society of Medicine a month after research from Oxford University published in The Lancet showed that taking 75mg of aspirin daily for five years reduces the risk of getting bowel cancer by a quarter, and deaths from the disease by a third. A 75mg dose is a quarter of the standard over-the-counter pill.
Earlier studies had already shown that a low daily dose could reduce the risk of developing heart disease.
Members of the panel said that the recent research was potentially of “enormous importance” to public health.
Bowel, or colorectal, cancer is the third most common form of the disease in Britain, with 39,000 diagnoses annually and 16,000 deaths.
The Lancet study suggests greater aspirin use could potentially save thousands of lives a year in relation to this one cancer alone.
But research is also looking into whether aspirin could have a preventive effect on other types of cancer as well.
Combined, all cancers claim more than 150,000 lives in Britain every year, while cardiovascular disease accounts for some 200,000 deaths.
