HEIDELBERG, Germany, Dec. 8 (UPI) -- German researchers say ingestion of low-dose aspirin prior to the use of the fecal occult blood test could improve cancer detection.
Dr. Hermann Brenner of the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, Germany, and colleagues linked use of low-dose aspirin before taking the test with higher sensitivity for detecting advanced colorectal tumors.
The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, tested two fecal occult blood tests for colorectal cancer among users and non-users of low-dose aspirin. For both tests, sensitivity was markedly higher among users of low-dose aspirin compared with non-users.
"Our study strongly suggests that use of low-dose aspirin does not hamper testing for fecal occult blood by immunochemical tests," Brenner said. "On the contrary, our findings raise the hypothesis that test performance may be enhanced by temporary use of low-dose aspirin, a hypothesis that needs replication in larger samples and followed up in further research, ideally including randomized trials and different types of fecal occult blood test."
The researchers looked at a large sample of women and men undergoing colorectal screening -- 1,979 patients with an average age of 62.1 years, of whom 167 men and 67 women were regular users of low-dose aspirin. The study subjects included 1,746 -- 809 men, 937 women -- who never used low-dose aspirin.
