- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Women
who take an aspirin a day -- which millions do to prevent heart attack
and stroke as well as to treat headaches -- may raise their risk of getting
deadly pancreatic cancer, U.S. researchers said on Monday.
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- The surprising finding worried doctors, who say women
will now have to talk seriously with their physicians about the risk of
taking a daily aspirin.
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- Pancreatic cancer affects only 31,000 Americans a year,
but it kills virtually all its victims within three years.
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- The study of 88,000 nurses found that those who took
two or more aspirins a week for 20 years or more had a 58 percent higher
risk of pancreatic cancer.
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- "Apart from smoking, this one of the few risk factors
that have been identified for pancreatic cancer," Dr. Eva Schernhammer
of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston,
who led the study, told a news conference.
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- "Initially we expected that aspirin would protect
against pancreatic cancer, especially since its preventive role in colorectal
cancer has been well documented. However, now it appears that we need to
examine the relationship more thoroughly," Schernhammer added in a
statement.
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- "This finding does not mean that women should no
longer use aspirin. There are still important benefits to the drug; we
also need other large cohort studies to confirm our finding before we can
draw any conclusions."
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- Schernhammer and colleagues presented their findings
to a meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, of the American Association for Cancer
Research.
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- They studied 88,378 women taking part in a large and
wide-ranging study of nurses and their health.
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- Over 18 years, 161 of the nurses developed pancreatic
cancer.
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- Those who took 14 tablets or more per week had an 86
percent greater risk of pancreatic cancer than non-users. The nurses who
took between six and 13 tablets had a 41 percent higher risk, while those
who only took one to three aspirins a week had an 11 percent greater risk.
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- The women who took the most aspirin said they were taking
it not to protect against heart disease, but because of headaches or other
aches and pains.
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- Even with the increased risk, heart disease is a much
greater threat to a woman's, or a man's, health. It is by far the biggest
killer in the United States and other developed nations. The American Heart
Association says cardiovascular disease killed more than 945,000 Americans
in 2000.
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- Doctors do not clearly understand what causes pancreatic
cancer, or what makes it so deadly. Obesity is another risk factor, but
Schernhammer said her team's findings held regardless of a woman's weight,
whether she smoked and whether she had diabetes.
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- Schernhammer noted that one study showed that regular
aspirin use may cause pancreatitis -- an inflammation of the pancreas that
can sometimes lead to pancreatic cancer.
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- "There is urgent need to settle the biologic reasons
for pancreatic cancer," she said.
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