Did you know that an aspirin a day could keep the doctor away?  According to a recent article in Reuters, a study published by BioMed Central’s journal on Breast Cancer Research says that aspirin could lower your chances of getting breast cancer.

This study is also backed up by a study done at Columbia University in 2004.  This study also found that women who took aspiring on a regular basis had a lower chance of getting a particular type of breast cancer. This type of cancer is called estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer.  This type of cancer is responsible for three fourths of all breast cancer cases.

The recent study was conducted by Gretchen Gierach at the National Cancer Institute, which is part of the National Institute of Health.  It claims that daily aspirin supplements can cut your risk of getting breast cancer by 16%.  Gierach is hopeful that this news could benefit women. 

 

The study was conducted in the United States on women who are cancer free at the time of the study.  There were around 127,000 women ages 51 to 72 and 18% of them already took aspiring on a regular basis.  They followed these women for 7 years and 4,500 got breast cancer during this time.  If these results are definitively true than this could be big news for all women.  Lowering breast cancer rates by even 16% could have a massive impact on public health. 

Both studies support the idea that a daily aspirin may lower your chances of getting estrogen reception positive breast cancer.  This type of breast cancer is a more common form of breast cancer.  However, breast cancers that aren’t related to this form did not show any lowered chance of developing.  Another important point of the study was that you need to take the aspirin daily in order to receive the benefits. 

 So talk with your doctor if you think that you may benefit from taking an aspirin a day to lower your chance of developing breast cancer.  Its always important to talk to him or her before jumping into any sort of aspirin treatment.