NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – The use of aspirin as a cardioprotective agent significantly reduces recurrence among patients being treated for high-grade, non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer, the results of a small case-control study suggest.

The subgroup of patients with carcinoma in situ and high-grade papillary bladder cancer has a “high risk of tumour recurrence and progression and thus represents an ideal cohort for evaluating chemopreventive agents,” the research team, led by Dr. Jason R. Gee at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, comments in the March issue of BJU International.

Their study cohort comprised 43 such patients treated with intravesical bacille Calmette-Guerin. Twenty were taking aspirin (81 or 325 mg/day) for cardioprotection.

The 5-year recurrence-free survival rate was 64.3% among those taking aspirin versus 26.9% among those not taking aspirin (p = 0.03). After adjusting for multiple confounders, aspirin correlated with a significant effect on recurrence rate (hazard ratio 0.179, p = 0.001).

Other independent predictors were maintenance treatment with intravesical bacille Calmette-Guerin (HR 0.233, p = 0.02) and smoking history (HR 3.199, p = 0.05).

“The results of the present study support the further investigation of aspirin and other NSAIDs as preventive agents in patients being treated for non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer,” Dr. Gee and associates conclude.

Reference:
BJU Int 2009;103:736-739.