Low-dose aspirin and survival from lung cancer: a population-based cohort study

Background: Preclinical evidence suggests that aspirin may inhibit lung cancer progression. In a large cohort of lung cancer patients, we investigated whether low-dose aspirin use was associated with a reduction in the risk of lung cancer-specific mortality. Methods: We identified lung cancer patients from English cancer registries diagnosed between 1998 to 2009 from the National Cancer Data Repository. Medication usage was obtained from linkages to the UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink and lung cancer-specific deaths were identified from Office of National Statistics mortality data. Hazard ratios (HR) and 95 % confidence intervals (CI) for the association between low-dose aspirin use (before and after diagnosis) and risk of lung cancer-specific mortality were calculated using Cox regression models. Results: A total of 14,735 lung cancer patients were identified during the study period. In analysis of 3,635 lung cancer patients, there was no suggestion of an association between low-dose aspirin use after diagnosis and cancer-specific mortality (adjusted HR = 0.96, 95 % CI: 0.85, 1.09). Similarly, no association was evident for low-dose aspirin use before diagnosis and cancer-specific mortality (adjusted HR = 1.00, 95 % CI: 0.95, 1.05). Associations were comparable by duration of use and for all-cause mortality. Conclusion: Overall, we found little evidence of a protective association between low-dose aspirin use and cancer-specific mortality in a large population-based lung cancer cohort.