Can Aspirin treat breast cancer? Why aren't we trying to find out?

[Swordsoffreedom]

A question of Big Pharma and their agenda and how much it really impacts new research
If its not patentable, already out of commercial license and does not have many side effects then why the heck would we fund it, when we can sell you something 10x more expensive instead.

From the comments
This is what happens when governments are taken over by the corporate sector. If there is no profit in it, and in this case the patent is off aspirin, then there is no research, despite the billions in healthcare cost savings and the societal benefits. That doesn't matter - it's all about enriching the corporate class, even if it harms society. How perverse have we become??

http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/can-aspirin-treat-breast-cancer-why-aren-t-we-trying-to-find-out-1.2714640
With no lucrative patent to be had, drug companies are reluctant to fund costly trials

When something belongs to everyone, like the sun, or the air, it has no market value. This is also true for the bark of the willow tree.

If no one owns it, then no one can sell it. And if no one can sell it, then who will invest the money to find out if it can treat breast cancer and save thousands of lives?

This is the dilemma confronting Dr. Michelle Holmes, a Harvard University researcher who believes that she has observed a chemical from the willow tree that looks to be doubling the survival rate from breast cancer.

The chemical is salicylic acid, modified into acetylsalicylic acid, pressed into a familiar white tablet and sold for more than a century as Aspirin.

Of course, some companies, notably Bayer, did make a fortune from the sale of Aspirin over the decades.

But its patent has long expired, which means its coffer-filling, block-buster days are over. And that's a problem for researchers who believe this humble drug might be harbouring unrecognized cancer-fighting properties.

Using data from the long-running Nurses' Health Study, Dr. Holmes identified more than 4,000 women with breast cancer, who had already undergone normal treatment, including surgery, chemotherapy and radiation.

She compared the death rate with the amount of Aspirin they had taken for other reasons — such as for pain, or the prevention of heart disease — and found that women who reported taking Aspirin were 50 per cent less likely to die from their cancer than the women who did not take Aspirin or its generic form, ASA.

Continues in article.

[DrG]

Being a phsycian who is really disgruntled with the current state of medicine I will throw in my 2 satoshi:

The study is retrospective and not the classical double blind model.  The women diagnosed as dying from the cancer had to have a cause of death directly cited as being attributed to the cancer.  If you take aspirin and you're healthy the biggest risk is bleeding.  This risk goes up several fold for cancer patients, and goes up through the roof for anybody on radiation or chemo due to the internal scarring and the decreased platelet counts.

Aspirin is great as an anti-inflammatory.  The problem with say "breast cancer" is that there are many different types.  Aspirin, or rather anti-inflammatory medications should be a mainstay treatment in cancer regimens.  Ultimately the patient would have to trust their oncologist to make a recommendation as to how to treat their individual cancer.

The article may not appreciate big pharm (and to be honest I'm disgusted with their direct to patient advertising) but the big pharm in the US are pretty much the only ones making the last 9 new chemo agents that did not exist 4 years ago.

Ultimately the cure for cancer will not be chemo mediators but rather cellular attack techniques which go back to molecular biology rather than biochemistry.

[Ron~Popeil]

Being a phsycian who is really disgruntled with the current state of medicine I will throw in my 2 satoshi:

The study is retrospective and not the classical double blind model.  The women diagnosed as dying from the cancer had to have a cause of death directly cited as being attributed to the cancer.  If you take aspirin and you're healthy the biggest risk is bleeding.  This risk goes up several fold for cancer patients, and goes up through the roof for anybody on radiation or chemo due to the internal scarring and the decreased platelet counts.

Aspirin is great as an anti-inflammatory.  The problem with say "breast cancer" is that there are many different types.  Aspirin, or rather anti-inflammatory medications should be a mainstay treatment in cancer regimens.  Ultimately the patient would have to trust their oncologist to make a recommendation as to how to treat their individual cancer.

The article may not appreciate big pharm (and to be honest I'm disgusted with their direct to patient advertising) but the big pharm in the US are pretty much the only ones making the last 9 new chemo agents that did not exist 4 years ago.

Ultimately the cure for cancer will not be chemo mediators but rather cellular attack techniques which go back to molecular biology rather than biochemistry.

As a doctor what do you think of the possibility that ketogenic diets being helpful in treating cancer? I read an interesting article about starving cancers of glucose to stop growth.

[DrG]

Being a phsycian who is really disgruntled with the current state of medicine I will throw in my 2 satoshi:

The study is retrospective and not the classical double blind model.  The women diagnosed as dying from the cancer had to have a cause of death directly cited as being attributed to the cancer.  If you take aspirin and you're healthy the biggest risk is bleeding.  This risk goes up several fold for cancer patients, and goes up through the roof for anybody on radiation or chemo due to the internal scarring and the decreased platelet counts.

Aspirin is great as an anti-inflammatory.  The problem with say "breast cancer" is that there are many different types.  Aspirin, or rather anti-inflammatory medications should be a mainstay treatment in cancer regimens.  Ultimately the patient would have to trust their oncologist to make a recommendation as to how to treat their individual cancer.

The article may not appreciate big pharm (and to be honest I'm disgusted with their direct to patient advertising) but the big pharm in the US are pretty much the only ones making the last 9 new chemo agents that did not exist 4 years ago.

Ultimately the cure for cancer will not be chemo mediators but rather cellular attack techniques which go back to molecular biology rather than biochemistry.

As a doctor what do you think of the possibility that ketogenic diets being helpful in treating cancer? I read an interesting article about starving cancers of glucose to stop growth.

I'm not an oncologist so I don't know too much about the growth capabilities of malignancies.  Certain organs in the body such as the human brain rely solely of glucose for metabolism (hence why you get lightheaded with low blood sugar).  Other organs such as the heart rely on branched chains for metabolism.

Each type of cancer is different since it originates from different tissue. The less differentiated it has become (as seen by doing cell flow cytometry) the worse the cancer is because it had gone back to being more or less a stem cell which can feed off glucose.

So it might be helpful in a poorly differentiated cancer but usually people who have those have Stage III or Stage IV cancer and the battle is probably lost.