Aspirin combined with hormone can shorten lives of prostate cancer patients
January 11th, 2010 Posted in hormone therapy, prostate cancer risksA new research at Brigham & Women’s Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, both in Boston, suggests that men undergoing hormone therapy for prostate cancer who take baby aspirin to protect their heart run a significantly higher risk of dying.
Hormonal therapy is a common treatment for prostate cancer. But it can raise the risk of a heart attack as it involves reducing levels of male hormones called androgens. So men who are older or have known coronary risk factors such as diabetes or smoking usually take baby aspirin while undergoing hormone therapy because aspirin helps prevent blood clots.
It was sort of a paradoxical finding that men who were taking aspirin were more likely to die of prostate cancer than those who were not, which didn’t make sense at first.
The study concluded if a man is taking baby aspirin just to prevent heart disease, then the oncologist should ask the primary-care physician if he could come off the baby aspirin for the months while he’s getting cancer therapy. But if the patient is on aspirin because he absolutely needs it, not just for prevention, then oncologists have to treat the prostate cancer without hormone therapy.
The findings are contained in a letter published in the Dec. 27 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.