SAN FRANCISCO—High exposure to aspirin and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) is associated with decreased prostate cancer-specific mortality, according to study findings presented here at the 2008 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium.
The finding is based on a study of 96,244 Swedish prostate cancer patients, of whom 1,168 had at least one hospitalization for rheumatoid arthritis. The researchers assumed that the patients with RA took aspirin or other NSAIDs. Among patients with and without RA, the mean age at cancer diagnosis was 74 years and the duration of follow-up was five years.
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Overall, prostate cancer patients who had ever been hospitalized for RA had a 12% reduced risk of dying from the malignancy compared with men who had not. Men who had been hospitalized for RA more than 10 times had a 44% decreased prostate cancer-specific mortality compared with men who did not have RA.
The study, led by Katja Fall, MD, of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, supports a hypothesis that inflammation may play a role in prostate cancer etiology and progression.
