Could this supermarket drug be the solution to increased ovarian cancer survival?

Researchers think yes.

Researchers identify new possibilities for aspirin. Image: Unsplash

New research shows that aspirin, an over the counter pain relief drug, could prolong the life of someone diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

In the most recent discovery in female health, researchers have found that a common over the counter drug can extend the survival of women who are in the late stages of ovarian cancer.

Australian scientists at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute have found that aspirin in regular low dosages is associated with prolonged survival for women after being diagnoses with the common cancer.

The study, which was published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, identified that with regular use, aspirin has the ability to prolong a patients survival by an average of two and a half months.

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What is ovarian cancer?

Ovarian cancer is the sixth-leading cause of cancer-related deaths in women worldwide and has the highest death rate of all female cancers per year in Australia. This is usually a direct result of hereditary dispositions to cancer of the reproductive organs, but it can also be common in older women with no predisposed history.

Lead author on the study, Dr Azam Majidi said that unlike other common cancers with hereditary factors, such as breast or colon cancer, there’s no existence of a population-based screening test for ovarian cancer to identify possible early stage diagnosis.

"It's just an internal organ, ovaries, so most women wouldn't even know that they have a tumour until it's grown to advanced stages and it had emigrated to other organs, and the treatment is just not responsive anymore," she said.

"Around 70 per cent of women, are diagnosed at advanced stages, stage three or stage four when the survival is really low."

Ovarian cancer is the sixth-leading cause of cancer-related deaths in women. Image: iStock

What are the symptoms of ovarian cancer?

In the early stages of the onset of ovarian cancer, many symptoms are hard to judge as they present as ordinary daily symptoms that arise from eating and moving.

Symptoms such as bloating, abdominal or pelvic pain, changes in urinary cycle, and feeling full after eating small amounts are such a few examples of the early stages of ovarian cancer.

Other less common symptoms can include changes to weight, irregular vaginal bleeding, irregular bowel movements and experiencing abnormal pain during sex.

Symptoms of ovarian cancer include abdominal and pelvic pain. Image: iStock

What the research says

Based off previous research which has evaluated the effects of aspirin in tumour cells showed promise that the over the counter drug could mitigate cancerous cell growth when taken regularly.

"The reason we started thinking about this and conducting this study was that several laboratory studies had already showed that when they added aspirin to a tumour cell, the growth of tumour was reduced and the reproduction of tumour cells reduced," Dr Majidi said.

However, Dr Majidi and her colleagues tested the drug even further, assessing its effects on real patients, rather than at the cell level.

Breaking up the study into timespans, researchers measured the increased survival from the start of treatment and 12 months into treatment until death or after five years, whichever came first.

Researchers concluded that prolonged survival of a couple of months presented after regular use of aspirin or other NSAID drugs both pre and post diagnosis.

"It would sound like a small amount of time but for ovarian cancer, when we're talking about survival, an increase of even one week or one month in survival, it's a huge time," study lead author Azam Majidi said.

"Considering the fact that it's a very cheap medication and it's been used in public for years and it's safe ... I think if it really gives improved survival like that, it's a huge discovery."

Researchers say that aspirin can prolong the survival of patients by up to two months. Image: iStock

With this new study adding to a number of other research cases on the use of aspirin and survivorship from cancer, Dr Majidi is hopeful that this is the start of a greater project to offer affordable treatment options to patients with the disease.

However, John Zalcberg, a professor of cancer research at Monash University's School of Public Health and Preventative Medicine, says that while it is promising news, it’s too soon to hail aspirin as an extended survival option for all cancer patients.

"We'd love to have something that would improve or reduce the incidence [of cancer], perhaps even prevent it, or indeed improve survival," he said.

"That's not clear that we can make those recommendations in a positive way at this point."

Originally published as Could this supermarket drug be the solution to increased ovarian cancer survival?