Daily Aspirin Cuts Colon Cancer Risk in People Genetically Prone to the Disease

Colon cancer is one of the most common cancers in the United States, diagnosed in more than 130,000 new patients each year. For most people, the life-time risk for developing colon cancer is about six percent, but the risk is more pronounced for those with hereditary colon cancer syndromes. Patients who have inherited one of these syndromes have an extremely high risk for developing colon cancer, approaching 90 to 100 percent. However, European researchers say people with the most common of these syndromes, Lynch syndrome, could significantly reduce their chances of developing colon cancer by taking daily doses of an inexpensive over-the-counter drug that’s been around for better than a century and continues to be at the forefront of emerging science—aspirin.