Analysis: Excellent news – but too many questions are still unanswered

LIKE any other drug, aspirin isn’t harmless. For some people, it causes stomach ulcers and internal bleeding, and about one in 100 people taking aspirin has an allergic reaction, writes Professor Peter Johnson

That’s the bad news. The good news is that evidence is steadily building to suggest popping a daily aspirin cuts the chances of getting and dying from cancer.

For us, a cancer charity, that’s not just good news, that’s excellent news. But we’re not yet issuing any recommendations about daily aspirin, because there are still unanswered questions about the benefits and risks associated with its long-term use. And we simply don’t know enough about who will benefit most from the drug.

But the research published yesterday is certainly some of the most compelling to show that aspirin – a cheap, readily available drug – could one day be an important tool in the fight against cancer.

We hope that on the back of this latest work, the government will start to think about developing some definitive advice about whether aspirin should be recommended more widely.

• Professor Peter Johnson is chief clinician of Cancer Research UK