Researchers at Newcastle University gave 861 people with the syndrome either 600 milligrams of daily aspirin or a placebo for about two years, then followed them for up to two decades to see whether a cheap, common drug could change that risk over the long run.
Aspirin showed no significant effect when the two-year treatment period ended, but the gap opened afterwards: an analysis in 2011 already found fewer colorectal cancers on aspirin, and the planned ten-year follow-up, with registry data reaching twenty years for some participants, confirmed a 35 percent lower hazard of colorectal cancer than placebo.
The long delay between treatment and benefit was itself a finding, suggesting aspirin's protective effect in this population builds slowly rather than acting quickly like a drug treating active disease. The trial did not establish an ideal dose or duration, and a separate trial is now testing a lower dose to see if it works as well with less risk of stomach bleeding.
Read the original study
Burn et al., The Lancet, 2020 · doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30366-4
A cheap pill, a years-later payoff.
Source
- Burn, J., Sheth, H., Elliott, F., Reed, L., Macrae, F., Mecklin, J.-P., Möslein, G., McRonald, F. E., Bertario, L., Evans, D. G., Gerdes, A.-M., Ho, J. W. C., Lindblom, A., Morrison, P. J., Rashbass, J., Ramesar, R., Seppälä, T., Thomas, H. J. W., Pylvänäinen, K., . . . CAPP2 Investigators (2020). Cancer prevention with aspirin in hereditary colorectal cancer (Lynch syndrome), 10-year follow-up and registry-based 20-year data in the CAPP2 study: a double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled trial. The Lancet, 395(10240), 1855–1863. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30366-4