Daily Aspirin Doubles Melanoma Risk in Men

Remember when your doctor ran down the list of reasons you should take a daily aspirin? (It appears to reduce the risk of gastric, colon, prostate and breast cancer.)  Well, that was before researchers at Northwestern University concluded that men who take once-daily aspirin have nearly double the risk of melanoma compared to men who are not exposed to daily aspirin. And women? No increased risk was seen. Science Daily reports on the study, which looked at data from almost 200,000 people, ages 18 to 89, with no history of melanoma and a follow up time of five years. The researchers divided the data into two groups: data from people who were “aspirin-exposed,” and those who were not. The researchers found that out of 195,140 patients, 1,187 were aspirin exposed. Of these 1,187 patients, 26 (2.19 percent) (both men and women) had a subsequent diagnosis for melanoma compared to 1,676 (0.86 percent) in aspirin-unexposed (men and women) patients. Science Daily reports that when the groups were separated into men and women, men exposed to aspirin had almost twice the risk for diagnosis of melanoma  compared to men in the same population who were not exposed to aspirin.

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