Aspirin may have an unexpected anticancer benefit. German researchers have reported that people who take low-dose aspirin before using a fecal occult blood test get much more accurate readings from the test. This low-tech, noninvasive screening tool is used to determine who needs further testing for colon cancer. It measures minute amounts of blood in the stool. In this study, nearly 2000 patients who were getting colonoscopies also underwent the fecal occult blood test. The colonoscopy provides a gold standard for verifying the accuracy of the stool test. This inexpensive diagnostic tool was twice as accurate among subjects taking low-dose aspirin and correctly detected 70 percent of the tumors.
[JAMA Dec. 8, 2010]
The People's Perspective on Medicine