Over-the-counter medicine helps the immune system fight cancer

Helps the immune system

Now acetylsalicylic acid has also been shown to prevent the development and progression of colorectal cancer, also known as colon and rectal cancer.

Research has previously hinted at that effect, but the underlying mechanisms involved have until now been unknown.

Italian researchers, led by the University of Padova, have found that aspirin appears to help our immune system detect and target those cancer cells.

It gives acetylsalicylic acid its observed anticancer properties.

“Our study shows a complementary mechanism for preventing or treating cancer with aspirin in addition to its classical drug mechanism involving inflammation suppression,” says the lead researcher Marco Scarpaat the University of Padova, in a press release, writes Newsweek.

Tissue samples and lab tests

The researchers obtained tissue samples from patients who between 2015 and 2019 underwent surgery for colorectal cancer, 12 percent of these patients regularly used aspirin.

Tissue samples from the patients who used aspirin showed less spread of their cancer to the lymph nodes, the immune system’s key checkpoint, and more immune cells in their tumors.

It suggests that these patients’ immune systems did a better job of fighting their cancer.

The researchers also investigated how exposure to aspirin affects colorectal cancer cells and associated immune cells in a laboratory setting.

They found that the immune cells exposed showed higher levels of activation and improved ability to alert other immune cells to the presence of the growing tumor.

It is still unclear exactly how much aspirin is needed to achieve the effects the researchers have seen.