an aspirin a day

Sunflower64

hi,

has anyone talked to their onco re: taking aspirin to decrease recurrance risk? i have a call into mine to see what she recommends. just was wondering what you have heard. how much and when to take it.

thanks,

diane

Ezscriiibe

I have a nasty ulcer (as if there were any other kind) and aspirin is not on my list of available meds.

lexislove

Ok...I just typed out a response and then poof...!....gone!..lol.

Long term Aspirin use can possible result in ulcers, kidney problems and in rare cases..internal bleeding. It NOT recommended on chemo.

I asked my onc, who by the way didn't hear about the whole Aspirn theory, what he thought. Well...he definatly wouldnt start Aspirin while on Zometa. Even though he checks my kidney levels before every infusion...you just never know. He told me to wait untill I finish Zometa at least, that will be Jan 2011. I can wait a year...I look at things this way....at 30 yrs old I had a 1 in 200 chance of getting BC. I had a 10% chance of testing as a poor Tamox metabolizer...lol. Well, I won both of those lotteries. Im not taking a chance here. MO.

Although he said the findings were interesting....he says the are a lot more info that is needed..of course..lol.

I think the study was focussing on a low dose of Aspirin 81mg.

lexislove

So when I google Aspirin and breast cancer....the articles come up. Nurses from 1976 -2006...Aspirin 2-5x a week...lower recurence...blah..blah..blah. The woman had early stage disease. Ok...so stage 1-2? Stage 1-3?

BUT....nothing is mentioned about them doing chemo, rads, anti hormones (Tamox). I know Tamox has only been around the last 25 yrs or so....but the time line of these findings (1976-2006)  anti hormones would be in the mix for most of it. Lifestyle factors (diet/exercise). ?

Were most of these woman ER+?  These are all questions Im wondering...

AND...since most of these woman were taking the Aspirin as a preventive measure against heart disease.....how many actually ended up WITH heart disease...lol. thats what I want to know!

Husband11

lexislove:

 The data included stages 1-3 women.  Over 4000 women in total with breast cancer and usable data.  The risk reduction of recurrance or death was seen equally in both ER+ and ER - women.  The risk reduction of BC death was seen to be quite pronounced in Stage III women as with the other stages.  Relative risk (the lower the better) was seen to be 0.2 in the Stage I women, 0.17 in the Stage II women, and 0.2 in the Stage 3 women for aspirin intake of 2-5 days a week.  This is compared to relative risk of 1.0 for women who reported no use of aspirin.  So that's an 80% reduction in risk of breast cancer death for the 0.2 group taking aspirin 2-5 times a week.

As for the number of women whose data was usable, is breaks down as follows in person years:

Stage I:   2688 person-years

Stage II:  1,874 person-years

Stage III: 360 person-years

I am guessing person years means number of women times the number of years of usable survey data.  At the very least it appears that all groups received near equal benefit.  About the only large variant in reduction recurrance seems to be body mass index.  The women with a BMI of more than 25kg/m2 did worse and didnt' get the same degree of benefit as the women with a lower BMI.

Husband11

As for prior treatment:

 Radiation: 40 to 53 percent

Chemo: 35-41 percent

tamoxifen or AI:  58-72 percent

Hope this helps in giving more detail to the types of women in this data collection.

lexislove

I like this breakdown..thank you!

Im taking home that BMI has a profound effect on outcome..besides the Aspirin. Which, we all already know. Just another reason for me to get my butt in gear...once and for all.lol.

Im glad that ER- woman can benefit just the same! This is good news...and that Stage 3 woman befit the same.

Im still wondering about chemo,rads,anti hormones though. Is there anything out there showing otherwise?

lexislove

you already answered my question..thank you.

Finally...some real data.

Take home message here as well...take your anti hormones. Adherence is huge!

lexislove

Again....I type something out an poof...! Be gone!

Im not re typing this time.

Husband11

One more bit of data, the women were 76-81% ER+

The reason I state a range of % is because they break down the data by % for women in each of the aspirin frequency groups.  For example the Never used aspirin group is the 81% ER+ and the 2-5 times a week is the 76% ER+.

I agree about the reminder to adhere to your treatment.  There is another study that reports on non-adherance to therapies, and its really quite shocking.  Large numbers, like 1/3 of women report not taking their anti-hormonal treatments daily.  It wouldn't be fair to speculate the cause, but some of it unfortunately might be due to side effects.

ananda8

I called AstraZeneca about hair loss (it ended up being due to low Vitamin D).  The person who answered said that AstraZeneca was concerned about the number of women who do not take Arimidex as instructed.  They are working on trying to reduce side effects especially bone pain.

http://www.siteman.wustl.edu/internal.aspx?id=1119

Breast cancer patients taking the drug Arimidex to prevent recurrence of their disease sometimes suffer from bone, muscle or joint pains. Giving these patients vitamin D supplements can make the pain go away in some cases, according to Washington University physicians who treat cancer patients at the Siteman Cancer Center and Barnes-Jewish Hospital.

"We aren't certain why Arimidex would be associated with low levels of vitamin D, but scientists theorize that the drug depletes the body's stores of vitamin D by interfering with enzymes in the liver that process the vitamin," Rastelli says. "It's also interesting to note that vitamin D is scarce in most people's diets, coming mainly from whole milk, liver and fatty fish. The majority of vitamin D is produced in the skin in reaction to sunshine, but increasing avoidance of the sun and the use of sunscreens reduce that source, so it is relatively easy to become vitamin D deficient."

Here are the results of a pilot study. http://www.breastcancer.org/treatment/hormonal/new_research/20091215.jsp

High-dose vitamin D significantly reduced muscle and joint pain in breast cancer patients treated with the aromatase inhibitor anastrozole (Arimidex), results of a small, randomized clinical trial showed.

Weekly vitamin D supplementation led to significant improvement in pain and mobility after two months. The improvement began to dissipate after patients were switched to a monthly supplementation schedule and had largely disappeared by four to six months....

Additionally, inclusion criteria should be expanded to accommodate women with normal vitamin D levels, in light of recent evidence of significant differences in aromatase inhibitor-induced musculoskeletal pain in women with serum vitamin D levels >66 ng/mL (Breast Cancer Res Treat 2010; 119: 111-118).

Researchers should also consider other forms of vitamin D, they added. Cholecalciferol [D3], for example, maintains more stable serum vitamin D levels than the ergocalciferol [D2]  used in the study.

The study was supported by AstraZeneca.

The short answer is to reduce or possibly eliminate bone pain from Arimidex, your Vitamin D level should be around 66ng/ml

badger

Diane (and others wondering) - I asked my onc about taking aspirin to reduce recurrance risk and he said AFTER CHEMO it wouldn't hurt me to take a baby aspirin a day, it might even help my heart.

ananda8

There are so many things that are supposed to reduce recurrence risks.   I wish the NIH could sort observational, double blind and non-human studies under major and minor headings such as

CANCER: 

Nutritional Supplements

Foods

Vitamins and Minerals

As it is now, we are getting our information through the news or through forums like this.  Doctors seldom go into detail about the above.