Postmenopausal women enrolled in the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) who took nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (ie, aspirin or ibuprofen) appeared to have a lower risk of death from colorectal cancer than women who did not use these medications, according to new study results.
“Our results suggest that nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) use is associated with lower colorectal cancer mortality among postmenopausal women who use these medications more consistently and for longer periods of time,” said Anna E. Coghill, MPH, a doctoral student in epidemiology at the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
Coghill and colleagues studied the relationship between aspirin and nonaspirin NSAID use and colorectal cancer mortality in over 160,000 postmenopausal women enrolled in the WHI. Participants did not report a history of colorectal cancer at baseline.
Through the use of medical reports, researchers verified 2119 cases of colorectal cancer and 492 deaths due to colorectal cancer among the women enrolled in the study.
Coghill and her research team discovered that reported use of both nonprescription and prescription NSAIDs at baseline, by itself, was not linked with colorectal cancer mortality.
However, the rate of death due to colorectal cancer for women in the study who reported taking NSAIDs at both study enrollment and 3 years after study enrollment decreased approximately 30%. Furthermore, among women who reported at least 10 years of NSAID use at study enrollment, researchers observed significant reductions in colorectal cancer mortality compared to those women who reported no use.
“The results of our study help to further clarify the importance of different durations of NSAID use over time for the risk for dying from colorectal cancer,” Coghill said.
The findings were presented at the 10th AACR International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research, held October 22-25, 2011.
Source: AACR.