Source: www.mirror.co.uk Author: Miriam Stoppard In recent research, aspirin or ibuprofen were found to treble the chance of beating head and neck cancer. Could regular use of aspirin or ibuprofen boost survival rates from head and neck cancer? It seems it’s possible. In recent research, the common painkillers were found to treble the chance of survival (from 25% to 78%) for patients with a specific kind of cancer which contains an altered gene, known as PIK3CA. Around a third of head and neck cancers carry this mutation and it’s also found in other types of cancer. Head and neck cancer is newly ­diagnosed in more than 12,000 people in the UK each year, and in 65,000 in the US. It kills just over 4,000 people here and 14,000 in America. There are more than 30 areas in the head and neck where cancer can develop, such as the mouth and throat. Researchers at the University of ­California, San Francisco, looked at five-year survival rates for people ­diagnosed with the disease and found the regular use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as aspirin and ibuprofen, significantly improved survival for a third or more of patients with the disease. All the patients had the mutated gene. NSAIDs, however, had no effect on tumours without PIK3CA mutation. The study included 266 patients from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center whose tumours were surgically removed. Altogether, 75 tumours (28%) in the study had a change in the PIK3CA gene. Among the patients who [...]