People who’ve had colorectal cancer and have a known mutation should likely take aspirin to help prevent disease recurrence, according to a new study. The benefit of aspirin in preventing cancers has been shown before in the skin cancer melanoma, although Kimmel Cancer Center director William Nelson at Johns Hopkins says the mechanism is probably different.
Nelson: One of the things that looms large in the pathogenesis of melanoma is, particularly that related to sun exposure is sunburns. And so remember what happens with the sunburn is the UV light is absorbed by the skin does some kind of damage. The burn itself is the redness and all this stuff is an inflammatory response. It's not just sun exposure but in fact it looms large in melanoma, particularly skin melanoma whether you've had significant sunburns and one wonders if that doesn't attenuate the inflammatory response to any damage you might get.     :32
Consult your doctor before beginning aspirin, Nelson says. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.