Aspirin May Prevent Cancer from Spreading, New Research Shows | Hacker News Reader

Aspirin May Prevent Cancer from Spreading, New Research Shows

scientificamerican.com

280 pointsazuajef117 comments

(on my phone right now)

Hasn't this been known for a while now? (with COX-2 NSAIDs specifically, like Advil). Even the standard book "The Biology Of Cancer" (2014) mentions it in passing in one of the later chapters.

I believe there's even been trials where NSAID is applied topically during biopsy, reducing chance of mets.

If I recall correctly, suspected mechanism is some sort of correlation between COX-2 inhibition and decreased expression of CTLA4/PD-1.

It's kind of sad, but it seems that too often vital lines of research sit on university shelves for years before anything practical is done about it :/

(disclaimer: not an expert; just guy with cancer.)

There's documentation of firocoxib (a partially selective COX-2 inhibitor used in veterinary medicine) with efficacy against osteosarcoma, for instance.

> Even the standard book "The Biology Of Cancer" (2014) mentions it

Is this book ok for people with other backgrounds or does it require a good foundation in medicine or biology?

And could a programmer (that knows how to learn) deal with it without spending months on research?

Thanks and all the best wishes!

um some parts are more high-level than others, but a lot would be gibberish. Familiarity with the contents of e.g "Molecular Biology Of The Cell" would greatly increase your experience. -- That book is big and exhaustive (and expensive), a focused intro to the same material is MIT "Introduction To Biology" on EDx! It's an amazing course!

The book and MIT course also give a good enough conceptual intro to the chemistry concepts you need too. Obviously the rabbit hole goes deeep tho... people spend lifetimes scratching the surface.

NSAID: Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug

Erm... that's actually a great book. I'm part-way through it, but set it down a while back because somewhere around chapter 10 I felt like I was up against the law of diminishing returns. If you could happen to get me a page reference, I'd appreciate it.

There are some interesting theories about aspirin. For example that it was Rasputin's secret healing trick to tell people to stop taking it:

"Gilliard,[32] the French historian Hélène Carrère d'Encausse[33] and Diarmuid Jeffreys, a journalist, speculated Rasputin's healing practice included halting the administration of aspirin, a pain-relieving analgesic available since 1899.[34] Aspirin is an antiaggregant and has blood-thinning properties; it prevents clotting, and promotes bleeding which could have caused the hemarthrosis. The "wonder drug" would have worsened Alexei's joints' swelling and pain.[35][36]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Nikolaevich,_Tsarevich_...

It is also claimed to be the real cause of the "Spanish flu":

"The high case-fatality rate—especially among young adults—during the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic is incompletely understood. Although late deaths showed bacterial pneumonia, early deaths exhibited extremely “wet,” sometimes hemorrhagic lungs. The hypothesis presented herein is that aspirin contributed to the incidence and severity of viral pathology, bacterial infection, and death, because physicians of the day were unaware that the regimens (8.0–31.2 g per day) produce levels associated with hyperventilation and pulmonary edema in 33% and 3% of recipients, respectively. Recently, pulmonary edema was found at autopsy in 46% of 26 salicylate-intoxicated adults. Experimentally, salicylates increase lung fluid and protein levels and impair mucociliary clearance. In 1918, the US Surgeon General, the US Navy, and the Journal of the American Medical Association recommended use of aspirin just before the October death spike. If these recommendations were followed, and if pulmonary edema occurred in 3% of persons, a significant proportion of the deaths may be attributable to aspirin." https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/49/9/1405/301441/Salicy...

> 8.0–31.2 g per day

That is surprising amount of aspirin.

I would go out on a limb and say it's a LOT of Asprin. I usually use "surprising" on HN because anything more specific gets criticized surprisingly often, but that is a ton of asprin

it's a veritable fuck-ton. the usual modern dose is 325mg.

The maximum daily dose is usually around 4g. 325mg is probably the dose in one tablet.

Doctor here: very rarely does any prescribe anything more than 325mg daily. Most people get 81mg daily. 325mg is considered high dose.

You are correct that it can be written for more, but the only indication you would prescribe a higher dose is as a pain or fever reducer, and we have more effective NSAIDs for that. Or tylenol (?NSAID).

I've personally never seen it given more than 325mg daily.

In the United States, 325mg is the amount in a single standard OTC pill. People often take two pills because of the old doctor's adage, "take two aspirin and call me in the morning".

81mg is marketed as low-dose (aka "baby aspirin"--because of the size or dose, not because it's intended for babies) and often prescribed as prophylaxis. But that's not particularly relevant wrt the maximum safe short-term dosage. The worst part of a flu usually only lasts a few days.

Here are the label directions from a bottle of generic aspirin as shown on Amazon (GoodSense Aspirin Pain Reliever 325 mg Coated Tablets, 100 Count).

  Drink a full glass of water with each dose. Adults and
  children 12 years and over: take 1 or 2 tablets every 4
  hours or 3 tablets every 6 hours, not to exceed 12 tablets
  in 24 hours. Children under 12 years: consult a doctor.

That's approx. 4 grams/day for OTC usage.

So what we have learned here is that whilst many years ago 8-30+ g daily dosage was either routine or at least proscribed in some cases, the routine upper limit is now much reduced because the side effects of taking Salicylate in such huge doses are worse than the symptoms or conditions that it was prescribed for.

However, it may be possible that the stuff might (in huge doses) cure or at least reduce something even worse than its own side effects. Then you are in the realms of a simple risk assessment where the failure mode is pretty horrid but that has to be weighed up against the alternatives if they even exist - all of which ... well you get the idea.

(IANAD)

The labels on over-the-counter, "adult low dose" aspirin recommend taking up to 48 81mg aspirin tablets (3.9g) per 24 hour period before checking with a doctor to see if that is okay. I was taking up to 1g per day at one point (for pain), thinking that it was a very low dose because of the labels. :/

https://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/image.cfm?id=93682&nam...

What do you mean by (?NSAID) after tylenol?

Because acetaminophen/paracetamol is only weakly anti-inflammatory, so you may or may not consider it an NSAID, I assume.

Isn't tylenol fairly dangerous?

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/505/...

Toxic to the liver in large or frequent dosage.

> I've personally never seen it given more than 325mg daily.

Really? Lortab 5/500?

is tylenol, not aspirin. unless the formulation has changed.

I'm not sure of any generic formulations of hydrocodone that are made with aspirin and widely prescribed.

there are some like Percodan but those are 5/325 AFAIK and oxycodone, not hydrocodone.

I'm not a doctor though, just a nerd.

Lortab has all sorts of variations, 500 mg aspirin being one: https://www.drugs.com/imprints/500-4519.html

Acetaminophen != NSAID

In the US. It's higher in France, for example.

Wild guessing: maybe it contained much less then the xx grams of (pure) aspirin? The rest could have been filler as the tech wasn't as precise as today.

you know what they say, ten aspirin tablets a-day keeps the emergency room busy.

Even a small amount of Asprin, if taken regularly, will mess up your stomach in my experience!

I guess not everyone is sensitive to it, but for me I've avoided Asprin (and Ibuprofen, another NSAID drug) for years because of this.

What's 'regular?'

I use ibprufen exclusively, without stomach issues.

But not daily. I probably take it once per week on average. Usually when lacking caffeine has caused a headache. Or eyestrain, occasionally.

Those are probably the issues I should fix, though.

>But not daily. I probably take it once per week on average.

My grandmother shits and pukes blood if she takes NSAIDs of any kind, from long-term, daily misuse. I'm not exaggerating even a little bit, I wish I was.

A direct result of being denied access to proper pain relief, mind you, mainly because she lived her entire life without health insurance. Until she turned 65 and qualified for Medicare last year. I had to take every NSAID out of the house, and throw them away, because every time she ran out of opiates for pain relief she'd over-compensate with a handful of NSAIDs which resulted in some scary events, including coffee ground bowel movements which were in fact blood from her stomach. As well as constant vomiting, etc.

My grandfather is similarly damaged from being recklessly over-prescribed NSAIDs, namely 800mg ibuprofen up to 8 times per day, resulting in shitting and puking up blood. He can't have more than an 81mg aspirin now.

/anecdotal evidence

After surgery I was prescribed an NSAID called Naproxen. It's apparently much easier on the stomach than Ibuprofen, but has a very slightly higher chance of causing a heart attack or stroke.

I think this is one of those situations where they'd rather a thousand people be miserable and wreck their stomachs than one person drop dead and cause a lawsuit.

Add me to the anecdotal evidence there. A regular dose of ibuprofen and I can't eat and I throw up blood for a day..

Same here. I had an acute bleed from using NSAIDs, lost consciousness and came within an inch of dying. I now get extremely emotional when I see articles or comments recommending them without any disclaimer. There's a dangerous misconception that they are harmless (or even health promoting) if used at low / moderate doses.

Are you taking it with food? Because ibuprofen absolutely will cause GI bleeding if you take it without food, and yet most of the time there is no label on the bottle to warn you about this.

I had some back problems and was reliant on ibuprofen for a few years. By the time I stopped taking them, I had to choose between back pain/ not being able to walk, or throwing up blood and not being able to eat.

In the peak of my "strenuous exercise" and "age" graph, I was taking about 12 advil a day, with Zantac. Eventually that, combined with a bit too much drinking (0-3 drinks a day), culminated in a messed up stomach. But I easily can go 2-4 advil a day without a problem. I avoid it, these days, and typically take 1 or 2 every day or two.

In the military, "Vitamin M" (800mg of motrin/ibuprofen, about 4 advil) used to be heavily given for about anything multiple times per day!

That's a bit scary. Chronic use of NSAIDs has been associated with kidney cancer, and if that doesn't scare you, erectile dysfunction may, if you're a man. I'd go with Tylenol instead (carefully), although that has pretty serious liver risks too.

I've stopped taking either unless I have a strong reason. No more chronic use at all - yoga does more for pain relief long term, and I stopped playing soccer, and limit myself to lower impact sports. I'm sore enough after exercising without some 20 year asshole laying me out on the field ;)

Given the doctors seem to be telling everyone over 50 to take a daily aspirin, I would think that a goodly chunk of people aren't sensitive. It might be the low dose people are taking.

It's also possible that the heart benefits outweigh the side effects. A lot of medicine is just saying "this sucks but if you don't do it you'll die" and prescribing the least bad option.

As a Crohn's Disease patient, my GI doc advises me to avoid aspirin and Ibuprofen because of their effect on the digestive system. Acetaminophen is fine for this, but apparently requires some care itself because large doses can damage the liver.

I come from a long line of iron-stomachs who don't bat an eyelash at any of those. ;)

As for the internal bleeding risks, I was wondering what the actual numbers were. This is based on one low dose aspirin a day.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2036.2006....

"These results translate into an absolute rate increase with aspirin above placebo (the incidence of cases of major GI bleeding attributable to low-dose aspirin) of 0.12% per year (95% CI: 0.070.19% per year).[20] Based on this value, 833 patients (95% CI: 5261429 patients) would need to be treated with low-dose aspirin instead of placebo to cause one major GI bleeding episode during a 1-year period (i.e. the NNH is 833)"

Does that mean the risks are very low? What about compared to aspirin alternatives such as ibuprofen or acetaminophen (in terms of how much damage they can each cause to the body, and which is safer)?

Are those really alternatives in this context? The linked study highlights

>Low-dose aspirin, commonly defined as 75–325 mg daily, is used for primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular events such as myocardial infarction (MI).

The whole purpose of aspirin here is its blood-thinning properties and the effect this has on cardiovascular events. Do ibuprofen and acetaminophen have those same properties, or are you just calling them alternatives in terms of pain relief or other applications?

Acetaminophen in particular is somewhat scary. Just 2.5x the recommended maximal daily dose of 4g can lead to complete liver failure. With alcohol, other medication, or existing damage, much less could be enough.

It's arguable that Acetaminophen shouldn't be an OTC drug. And that, had its liver toxicity been fully understood, it probably wouldn't be.

At the time, it apparently seemed a good alternative to aspirin which does cause some number of people to have stomach problems. (As well as having a particularly extensive repertoire of only somewhat understood physiological effects, for better or worse.)

And aspirin should never be used in children because its use in children is associated with Reye syndrome.

A friend of mine swears that the reason acetaminophen is added to opioids (like hydrocodone) is so that you cant abuse the opioid without being poisoned by the acetaminophen.

If true, it's alarming that the way to "prevent abuse" is to poison the patient.

A more extreme example of this concept is denatured alcohol, which is ethanol adulterated to deter consumption.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatured_alcohol

That is completely correct. It also has synergistic effects as a pain reliever, but it's mainly there to deter abuse.

Of course, addicts have found ways to extract the opiates from the adulterants, so it's not even effective.

Source?

Adding it for synergism makes sense and is what I was taught in medical school. I doubt they add it to deter abusers, but I could be wrong...

Just look at the simple fact that they were schedule 3 instead of schedule 2 until 2014, even though the base hydrocodone was schedule 2 without adulterants.

Here's an interesting discussion from 2010, before they were rescheduled

https://painmedicine.oxfordjournals.org/content/11/3/379.ful...

I think what you were taught in med school was correct.

I was told by an emergency room nurse that Vicodin is not killing patients/abusers; it the liver damage that results from the acetaminophen.

A few years ago, I heard they were talking about removing it, but lost track of the outcome.

You can buy codeine over the counter in the UK, in doses of 8mg with 500mg acetaminophen(paracetamol to us). If you get a prescription, they happily bump it to 30/500

Isn't their anything that is uncomfortable in higher doses, but not deadly? Or have I misunderstood what I read about acetaminophen and/or liver failure–i. e. is there a meaningful dosage range where it's uncomfortable without causing irreparable harm?

GI bleeding is just one issue though. The other perhaps more scary one is hermorrhagic stroke.

I used to take low dose aspirin for 9 months a couple of years ago, but I stopped taking it after a blood vessel in my mouth suddenly bulged hugely and my (unrelated) nose bleeds became difficult to stop.

Because it's anti-inflammatory?

Could be confirmation bias, but I keep getting the sense that cancer/immune failure in general is connected to our modern 24/7 eating cycle, without any down time for your body to not be inflamed and work on clearing out bad stuff. Thus life extension from intermittent fasting.

Not only does the article address this point, but the point is literally the focus of the whole article.

I abstain from food between 8PM and 12PM Monday - Friday, adjusting for training schedules and such. It really helps me keep my GI tract clear, reduces inflammation, resulted in weight loss, etc. without any effect on my cycling fitness.

IF (or IMF as some people call it) is amazing.

I've fasted from ~8P to ~3P every day for coming up on 2 years and apart from making me more mindful of what I eat and drastically reducing my appetite I've experienced basically no other health benefits. IF is increasingly well studied and it is not especially amazing.

(I like it a lot. Just saying.)

I have the opposite experience. My body and mind function best with regular small meals every 3 or 4 hours.

With that regime I have constant energy without ups and lulls. It's great.

When I do go too long without eating, I feel fine and I don't feel particularly hungry. But people around me say that I become uncommunicative, quarelsome, and that I tend to just kind of sit there and stare in front of me unmovingly.

People particularly notice this at group dinners/brunches. Before food, I reply with 1-word answers and mostly don't engage in conversation. After food I'm the life of the party.

So yeah, fasting does not work for me. But I do tend to have very small breakfast. At 10am regardless of when i wake up.

Classic example of being low-level "hangry": hungry/angry. Beware of it in children when simple lack of food can spill over into full-blown tantrums!

Might be eating too many carbs, which spike blood sugar, and tend to produce the symptoms you mention.

Still, don't need to fast all day to fix the problem.

Funnily only about 30% of my calories come from carbs.

Except on half marathon days. I can't digest enough food to recover from a 2000 calorie run without carbs

I've tried going below 30% carbs but it makes me unstoppably crave chocolate.

I eat the ghirardelli dark chocolate (72 and 86%) often, it is healthy and low sugar. It's not the enemy. ;)

https://www.ghirardelli.com/chocolate-and-gifts/flavors/dark...

There are similar European varieties of course.

I do the same as well. It pretty much has changed my life.

The only thing I have noticed is that it seems not work well for females (my wife is annoyed about that).

Also strangely my blood sugar has been above normal lately which is strange because I don't eat a carb heavy diet and I have never had blood sugar problems. Last time it was checked it was ~105 mg/dl or so (and I was fasted of course).

I have had some theories about this but curious if anyone else seen this.

Interestingly, I have a similar problem. I eat low carb diet with an even protein and fat mix. However, my fasting blood sugar level still seems to linger around 100.

Stress and lack of sleep can dramatically raise blood sugar. I don't have diabetes but I check my blood sugar fairly regularly with a $30 glucose monitor. Bad sleep raises my fasting blood sugar to a level I would normally have after a bowl of ice cream.

What's your theory about the blood sugar?

I have the same issue. Hovers around 100 when not eating. What's weird is it drops to 85 within 20 minutes after eating a meal. I'm not sure what that could mean.

blood sugar is mostly regulated by hormones: glucagon and insulin. Not really by what you just ate. Hence why you can go days without eating and still have a normal blood sugar. Eating causes your pancreatic beta cells to release insulin (in response to elevations in blood glucose). Diabetics have spikes in their blood sugar right after they eat because they have impaired insulin sensitivity and so their tissues (muscles mainly) don't take up the sugar in the blood (a process mediated by insulin receptors).

I thought the literature suggested it worked better for women.

I'm basing this on my experience and numerous conversation with others which albeit is anecdotal and sort of worthless.

A quick googling shows mixed "feelings" (I stress feelings because I haven't seen/found an adequate reference yet).

Maybe later I will investigate it.

What's the trick? I wake up starving. If I go to bed starving I sleep horribly and eventually wake up to eat.

My understanding is that it doesn't work the same way for everyone. My theory is just that if you're insulin sensitive, then concentrating your eating to one small part of the day levels your blood sugar and hormones out for the rest of the day. My experience is: once I start eating during a day, I will be hungry for the rest of the day. If I just don't eat, I basically don't ever get hungry: I'll know it's time to eat when I start getting headaches and dizziness.

> My experience is: once I start eating during a day, I will be hungry for the rest of the day. If I just don't eat, I basically don't ever get hungry

Same experience for me. I wake up late in the morning and it's common for me to fast all day until the evening. I find that if I have breakfast or lunch, then I'm hungry throughout the day, and require several more meals to feel satiated. If I wake up and have only coffee, then I feel OK until the evening meal.

Strange how the body works.

I'm in this boat as well. Usually awake for ~6 hours before eating, and do not ever feel hungry in the morning, ever. That's not to say I can't wolf down a big breakfast, though...

Ever try bulletproof coffee? I had a pretty good experience with it. Especially because I don't like coffee black, and with bulletproof I was able to have coffee and still not add any sugars.

That's why you shouldn't skip breakfast entirely when you're dieting (at least that's what I've read). The stomach 'wakes up' when you first eat something, and uses more energy from that point on. If you eat something small, you'll feel hungry for more of the morning - because the extra activity from your stomach puts you in energy debt.

Huh - I feel that way with regards to food, in that once I eat I keep wanting to the rest of the day. Maybe I'll give this a shot...

Like most things, you get used to it. Eat dinner, and then don't eat again until lunch the next day. Have some water and black coffee in between.

Water and black coffee are my staples. I don't get hungry until 11:30AM or so, when my body is starting to expect food.

Eat low carb when you're feasting. I.e. stop eating sugar and grains that make your body crave and depend on them for energy all the time. Get off the insulin rush rollercoaster.

I've experimented with IF a few times and the big drawbacks for me are I have to choose between eating after I excercise (in the morning) and having dinner with my family.

The former means I'm ravenous the latter is a trade off I don't like for bonding reasons.

How much do you work out?

I like IF a lot too, but when I'm in a heavily active phase of my life--say lifting 3x week, climbing 1x, jiujitsu 3x, and full on dance rehearsals 3x a week--I find I start to crumble unless I eat more to keep fueled.

I was 5x5 when I started, for about 6 months, then hurt my ankle and don't do much more than walk a couple miles now. I worked out in fasted state and then would eat shortly after, because I'd be so ravenous that I could eat just protein and still enjoy the meal.

I should get back to lifting (I'm just lazy), and it's possible that some of the other purported IF effects would kick in if I did so --- but the literature isn't encouraging, at least what I've read (I may be reading the wrong stuff!).

I should add: I'm in pretty terrible shape! I joked on Twitter about how, in the post-AHCA US, my wife Erin will have trouble getting insurance despite her constant exercise and diet regime, while I, subsisting on pork fat, nicotine, and whiskey, will have no trouble. I mean, I eat a green bean here and there, but for the most part I'm not joking. :)

I don't have a lot of health objectives with IF; it's just mostly painless and imposes some structure over what I eat and when I have to take time out of my day to eat.

I ride 6 days a week for 1 to 5 hours per ride. 4 training rides, 2 recovery rides, and one off day per week. In terms of energy expenditure, it averages 700-900 calories/hour. A weeknight training crit and/or weekend races often replace the training days mid-season, and the schedule is tweaked for peaking at my A events.

For major events, I'll eat differently. But for general training, I am fine fasting until lunch.

Is that time a typo? Are you saying that there is only a 5 hour block of the day when you eat? (From 3pm to 8pm.)

I'm not the person you replied to but I'll churp in. I only eat once a day, at dinner time, so I eat in about a half hour block a day. I've been doing it for years. It's not really that odd once you get used to it. My appetite and food consumption has decreased dramatically and I am full much quicker. My food bill has decreased and it's very, very freeing to only have to worry about eating once a day. It's absolutely amazing for me though certainly not for everyone.

I eat in an 8 hour block. It started years ago when I wanted to hit "race weight". I stopped eating anything after 8PM (usually 7PM) so I wouldn't go to bed with food on my stomach. I slept better, and I am active after eating (walk with the family around the neighborhood), which reduces storage of calories. I was already skipping breakfast most days due to convenience.

Correct. That's what IF means.

^ IF == Intermittent Fasting

That's a really fancy way to say "I skip breakfast".

That's an interesting idea. I've been on calorie restricting diets non-stop for over a year with good results. My latest experiment is a kind of limited alternate day caloric restriction. I was having great results with full ADF (toggling food intake at 4pm each day), but I started to feel strange after a week or two, so the new diet is a little less extreme. I might try something like your schedule, if the current plan doesn't produce results.

If anyone is experimenting with calorie restriction or intermittent fasting near Berkeley, send me a message via my profile. I'm working on some self-tracking experiments with a group of people.

Train while fasted, you'll feel amazing trust me. I do a 16:8 daily fast too and do regular HIIT and strength training while fasted (in the morning). In the fasted state your body is producing more adrenaline and HGH which helps with performance and gains. It also trains your muscles to burn fat instead of sugar (since there's none available), which is incredible for endurance (run a half marathon or more on just water? no problem).

I think training in completely fasted state is ok, but not optimal; you should be cautious not go dogmatic regarding that, as at given point it might halt your progress. From my relatively modest experience (as former client of Martin Berkhan) - BCAA and/or MCT oil prior the workout might yield substantial positives.

Plant based diets are largely anti - inflammatory and Aspirin is essentially a processed phytonutrient.

Grains are notable exceptions.

first part; yes; second part; also yes

Talking about simply accessible products, anybody has knowledge about cannabinoids (specifically cannabidiol, not THC) ?

I've dug as deep as I could from someone out of a lab and found tons of evidence, but the issue is that doctors have each a different point of view on it. So far I got:

  - it's innocuous but help opioids for pain
  - it's potentially antitumoral but human studies are lacking [0]
  - it's been studied and discarded because useless [1]
  - cannabis derivatives are toxic [2]
  - what's cannibidiol ? oh USA use that, Europe lags behind, I'll see

[0] mice model with human cancer lines showed regression, look for pierre yves desprez or sean mcallister on pubmed, youtube has a talk where some patients reported IRM visible regression on stage IV cancer

[1] renowned oncologist opinion, yet so many research on cannabidiol still going ? odd

[2] so far I've yet to find more than one paper listing toxicity (except one talking about accidental overdose on that one hypersensitive person that used her daughter's provider)

I'll take any info just in case.

Sorry haven't got much time at the moment, here's the paper that got me interested

Anti-tumoral action of cannabinoids: Involvement of sustained ceramide accumulation and extracellular signal-regulated kinase activation

http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v6/n3/abs/nm0300_313.html

Put that into Google Scholar (the paper title or just "guzman thc"), then click on the Cited by xxx below in the search results to find newer papers.

GW Pharma is a company doing clinical trials, and i think Canadian licenced producers of cannabis are doing trials as well (though i don't know how many are about cancer/anti-tumoral activity).

Here's a long list of research papers on cannabinoids:

http://www.cannabis-med.org/studies/study.php

Oh I know that, I mailed Cristina Sanchez about her research. I looked for the GW trial (brain metastasis IIRC) in UK but so far couldn't find any results.

thanks for the other link, I never looked at that website before.

ps: and to add to the theories, Desprez cbd research hints at ID-1 transcription regulation; ID-1 appearing to be a embryogenic-time gene, turning cells into highly mobile and differentiating regime => aggressive tumor. If CBD does interfere with ID-1 expression, it's not implausible that tumors grow much more slowly and locally, which is probably always good.

pps: one more thing, cbd and cannabinoids have a huge image problem; people just dismiss it as hippie shit.

Probably more interesting is that the USPSTF recently added a recomendation for aspirin use to prevent colorectal cancer in certain populations[1]. There is increasing levels of evidence about this, though it is by no means certain.[2]

[1] https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/Page/Document/... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3354696/

Anyone have a link to the paper? I'm usually the first to criticise popsci treatments of cancer developments, but this actually seems to be an interesting study/development.

It seems the author is referring to a few papers, but the one most directly related seems to be http://atvb.ahajournals.org/content/37/4/664.long

I don't see a free, open-access form available.

Surely this would have been discovered by patients by accident, if it was true?

How? Maybe you went into remission because you took an aspirin every morning. Or maybe it's because drank a cup of coffee every day, or ate lots of greens, or spent 10 minutes in the sun every day, etc. Your body is complicated and more than likely lots of factors helped.

The effect in the article is just preventing metastasis, not going into remission. There's basically no way a single patient would have noticed that aspirin prevented that.

I don't think so - a cancer patient is probably taking/doing so many things for treatment that they wouldn't think to attribute it to cancer.

It could explain people eating healthy to get rid of cancer instead of chemo or traditional treatments - maybe they take aspirin too.

I know I wouldn't give aspirin a second thought if I had cancer.

They really do put you on some massive cocktails - notably large doses of prednisone, which is also a massively effective anti-inflammatory - so I can imagine it would be hard to pick out the causes precisely.

I doubt patients would consider the correlation since in their mind the effectiveness measure of aspirin specifically is pain relief rather than remission.

Plus lots of 'noise' from other treatments.

I think it would be hard to see too, but I know my grandfather for example had a long-term, small dose of asprin prescribed to him as a minor 'blood thinner'. So there perhaps exists groups of patients who could form a sample to compare against a more general population.

Aspirin (previously erroneously typed cancer, hat tip to 'tossaway1 for the correction!) has previously been associated with reduced colorectal cancer death[1]. The cancer/aspirin link has come up a fair amount over the past few decades.

1 = https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3354696/

Cancer has been associated with colorectal cancer death??

He obviously meant to type "aspirin" as the first word, but that was hilarious nonetheless.

Ha! :-) Thanks to both of you for noticing this. Updated.

That effect size, though... :/

'may'

So goes eating a whole plant based vegan diet. https://www.forksoverknives.com/science-says-about-diet-and-...

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