A combination of aspirin and cholesterol-lowering drugs, already used by millions of Americans to keep their hearts healthy, may also significantly lower their risk of colon cancer. The work is based on a new analysis of the powerful class of cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins. The research, conducted by doctors from St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York City, was released at the annual scientific meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research. Protective effects of aspirin and similar inflammation-fighting medicines against colon cancer are already suspected from earlier studies. But the possible role of the statin drugs has been much less clear.
Doctors often prescribe aspirin and statins at the same time to prevent heart disease.
Statins lower high cholesterol levels that clog the heart arteries, while aspirin makes the blood less likely to form clots that get stuck in tortuously narrowed arteries. The new work suggests that the same drugs prevent colon cancer by entirely different mechanisms. Although the precise actions are still murky, scientists theorize that they stop cells in the earliest stages of cancer from dividing and induce them to commit suicide. No human studies have been set up specifically to test these theories. However, data are available from several large studies on heart patients.