Another benefit of aspirin: It wards off recurrence of colon cancer, Mass General study says

Aspirin has long been dubbed the "wonder drug," and now a new study indicates another benefit in the cancer area. A study at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston reports that regular use of aspirin after the diagnosis of colorectal cancer results in a lower risk of colorectal cancer–specific and overall mortality, particularly among patients who had tumors that overexpress the enzyme COX-2. Aspirin acts as a Cox-2 inhibitor. In this subgroup, regular aspirin use was associated with a 61 percent decline in mortality rate compared with patients who used aspirin but had tumors that did not express COX-2 or had only weak expression, according to a New York Times article. This is good news for colorectal cancer patients because asprin is an inexpensive treatment, costing about a penny a pill.