Aspirin Lowers Risk of Skin Cancer? Study Shows the Medication May Help Prevent Deadly Melanoma in Women

Good news for all the feminine sun-bathers out there who are worried that basking in the rays will give them skin cancer...popping aspirin may be the answer to preventing melanoma!

According to a new study, women who take the over-the-counter medication can apparently lower their risk of contracting the most dangerous form skin cancer by nearly a third, reports NBC. Further, the longer they take aspirin, the more they reduce their risk.

Researchers from Stanford University School of Medicine in the US observed women aged 50 to 79 for an average of 12 years and recorded any cases of cancer, states New York Daily News. Results showed that women who had regularly been taking aspirin for five or more years were 30 percent less likely to develop melanoma than women who did not use aspirin. This held true even when scientists controlled for skin type, tanning habits, sunscreen usage, and other factors that could affect skin cancer risk. Researchers relied on data from 59,806 Caucasian women.

"We think our results are very exciting and that they add to the growing body of evidence suggesting that aspirin may have some real anti-tumor and anti-cancer properties," said study co-author Jean Tang, an assistant professor of dermatology at Stanford University.

Although the researchers don't know exactly how aspirin lowers melanoma risk, they have several theories that support their findings.

"Aspirin works by reducing inflammation and this may be why using aspirin may lower your risk of developing melanoma," said study leader Dr Jean Tang. "Cancer cells with a lot of inflammation grow more and are more aggressive," she continued. Tang added that cancer cells tend to produce in excess the very same substance that aspirin and other NSAIDs knock back. The findings are published in an early online edition of the journal Cancer.

Most women in the study took regular doses of aspirin, not baby aspirin. Interestingly, women who took other so-called NSAID painkillers, such as ibuprofen and naproxen, did not have a lower risk of melanoma. "There's nothing else that I know of that has as large an effect as what we're seeing with aspirin," Tang says.

Another theory deducted by Eric Jacobs, an epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society, is that aspirin may reduce cancer by inhibiting platelets, blood components that promote clotting, reports NPR.

"We know that activated platelets release substances that can encourage cancer growth and development," Jacobs says.

The anti-platelet effect could explain why the new study did not find a reduced risk of melanoma from anti-inflammatory drugs such as ibuprofen. These NSAIDs don't inhibit platelets the way aspirin does, says NPR.

One more theory, from Dr. Randall Harris of Ohio State University Harris, is that aspirin prevents cancer by damping down a master gene called Cox-2 that controls inflammation.

All of these theorists of the aspirin/skin cancer risk study agree that the worst thing "would be [for people to think], 'I can take aspirin, and that justifies me doing indoor tanning.' That is not the right message." Tang explains. Jacobs adds that it's important to remember that aspirin is a "real drug with real side effects."

Although one of the beneficial side effects of the over-the-counter drug may be that it can possibly lower the risk of skin cancer in women, popping high doses of aspirin daily is still not recommended, especially to the "fake n' bakers" out there.