Asprin Could Conceal Prostate Cancer Detection

September 9, 2008 Health    Print    Email this Article   No Comments

If you are a man taking certain pain relievers — including ibuprofen and aspirin — you may want to listen up.
Researchers say the pain meds can lower the levels of a protein doctors use to screen for prostate cancer.
Researchers at the university of Rochester medical center looked at more than thirteen hundred men age forty and up. They found those who took a no steroidal anti-inflammatory drug nearly every day had a prostate specific antigen — or p-s-a — level ten percent lower than those who took nothing.
Scientists believe those medications may hide a man’s risk of getting prostate cancer by lowering the p-s-a levels while the risk remains unchanged. Millions of people use no steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs for headaches, minor pain and arthritis. Prostate cancer is the second most commonly diagnosed form of cancer in men around the world.
Almost eight hundred thousand men are diagnosed per year. It’s the sixth mostly deadly form in men, with about a quarter of a million deaths per year.