Key result
Post-diagnosis low-dose aspirin use was associated with significantly decreased cancer-specific mortality (OR 0.84; 95% CI 0.75-0.93), whereas pre-diagnosis use was not.
Why the study?
Aspirin increases bleeding risk and observed all-cause mortality benefits may be driven by cardiovascular improvements, prompting an evaluation of low-dose aspirin and cancer-specific mortality.
Does low-dose aspirin use reduce cancer-specific mortality?
Meta-Analysis (n=82,422)
Does low-dose aspirin use reduce cancer-specific mortality?
Odds Ratio: 0.84 (95% CI 0.75–0.93)
Post-diagnosis low-dose aspirin use is associated with a significant reduction in cancer-specific mortality, particularly in digestive tract cancers.
Hypothesis-generating for post-diagnosis aspirin in cancer; prospective trials needed before clinical adoption.
BACKGROUND: Considering the increased risk of bleeding caused by aspirin, and the observed benefit in all-cause mortality may be due to an improvement in cardiovascular-related mortality. We carried out this meta-analysis to estimate the association of low-dose aspirin use and risk of cancer-specific mortality. METHODS: We searched the PubMed and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) databases for all articles within a range of published years from 1980 to 2018. RESULTS: Finally, 13 published cohort studies with 65 768 patients were available for estimating overall risk of cancer-specific mortality associating with post-diagnosis low-dose aspirin use, and 4 cohort studies were available for pre-diagnosis low-dose aspirin use with 16 654 patients. Overall, statistical evidence of significantly decreased cancer-specific mortality was found to be associated with post-diagnosis low-dose aspirin use (OR = 0.84, 95% CI = 0.75-0.93), but not with pre-diagnosis low-dose aspirin use. In terms of subgroup analyses by cancer type, post-diagnosis low-dose aspirin use was significantly with decreased cancer-specific mortality for digestive tract cancer including colorectal cancer, esophageal cancer and gastric cancer. CONCLUSION: Our meta-analysis indicated that post-diagnosis but not pre-diagnosis low-dose aspirin use may reduce cancer-specific mortality.
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Wang et al. (2019) conducted a meta-analysis in Cancer (n=82,422). Low-dose aspirin vs. No low-dose aspirin was evaluated on Cancer-specific mortality (OR 0.84, 95% CI 0.75-0.93). Post-diagnosis low-dose aspirin use was associated with significantly decreased cancer-specific mortality (OR 0.84; 95% CI 0.75-0.93), whereas pre-diagnosis use was not.
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