An aspirin a day may protect against skin cancer, some experts believe. A recent research has shown that people who take aspirin tablets or similar painkillers on a regular basis cut their risk of developing skin cancer, including the most deadly type, malignant melanoma.
A study in the journal Cancer involving nearly 200,000 people in Denmark says using sunscreen and avoiding too much sun are still the best ways to prevent skin cancer.
In the study, approximately 18,000 of the 200,000 participants had been diagnosed with of one of three types of skin cancer – basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, or the rarer but more dangerous malignant melanoma.
The researchers looked at the medical records of the individuals to calculate how many had been prescribed non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as aspirin, ibuprofen and naproxen over an eight-year period.
Many were taking them for heart conditions or arthritis.
Those who were more frequently prescribed NSAIDs were less likely to have skin cancer.
The higher the dose and the longer a person had been on the medication, the greater the protective effect.
Individuals with more than two prescriptions for NSAIDs had a 15% decreased risk for developing squamous cell carcinoma and a 13% lower risk of malignant melanoma.
NSAIDs did not appear to lower the overall risk of basal cell carcinoma – the most common and least aggressive type of skin cancer. But they did cut the risk of basal cell carcinomas developing on certain parts of the body other than the head and neck.