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PARIS: A small, daily dose of aspirin significantly diminishes the risk of death from a wide range of cancers, according to a landmark study.

Earlier work by the same team of scientists showed that the century-old remedy for aches and pains, long a staple of family pharmacies, can help ward off colon cancer.

The new study, published in the British medical journal The Lancet, reveals for the first time that aspirin also helps protect against prostate, lung, brain, and throat cancers, among others.

Studies not designed to measure aspirin

"These findings provide the first proof in man that aspirin reduces deaths due to several common cancers," said Peter Rothwell, a professor at the University of Oxford and lead author of the study.

Rothwell and colleagues reviewed eight previous clinical trials involving a total of more than 25,500 patients. In each, some subjects took aspirin and others look-alike placebos.

None of the studies were originally designed to measure the impact of the drug on the incidence of cancer.

Tiny doses

During the trials, which lasted four-to-eight years, doses of aspirin as low as 75 milligrams - a fraction the normal dose for a headache - cut cancer deaths overall by 21%.

Risk was especially reduced after five years of treatment with the drug, by 30 to 40% depending on the type of cancer.

Three of the eight trials ran long enough to examine the impact of aspirin over a period of two decades.

20-year risk drops by one fifth

The 20-year risk dropped on average by a fifth: 10% for prostate cancer, 30% for lung cancer, 40% for colon cancer and 60%for oesophageal cancer.

For cancer of the lung and throat, the protective effect was confined to adenocarcinomas, the type typically seen in non-smokers.

"Perhaps the most important finding for the longer term is the proof of principle that cancers can be prevented by simple compounds like aspirin, and that 'chemo-prevention' is therefore a realistic goal," Rothwell said.

The length of time before the benefits of taking aspirin kicked in also varied: five years for throat, pancreatic, brain and lung cancer, about 10 years for stomach and colorectal cancer and 15 years for prostate cancer.