Many people have heard that taking a small dose of aspirin every day might help prevent cancer, especially colon cancer, if used over many years. However, a new study led by Monash University challenges this belief—at least for older adults.
The study found that healthy people aged 70 and older who took low-dose aspirin every day did not have a lower risk of developing cancer. In fact, they had a higher risk of dying from cancer. These surprising results were published in the journal JAMA Oncology.
The research included 19,114 older adults from Australia and the United States. These participants were part of a large clinical study called ASPREE, which ran from 2010 to 2017.
Everyone in the study was 70 years or older (or 65 and older for some U.S. minorities), had no history of heart disease, dementia, or severe physical disability, and was generally in good health.
In the ASPREE trial, half of the participants were given 100 mg of aspirin daily, while the other half received a placebo—a harmless pill with no active ingredient.
After this phase, all participants stopped taking the study medications, and researchers continued to follow them in a second phase called the ASPREE-eXTension (ASPREE-XT) study. This second phase ran from 2018 to 2024 and allowed scientists to observe any long-term effects.
Over a median follow-up period of 8.6 years, the researchers looked at how many participants developed cancer and how many died from it. They found that the rate of new cancer cases was about the same in both groups, whether or not they had taken aspirin.
This was true even when looking at different cancer stages and whether the cancers had spread or not.
However, cancer-related deaths were 15% higher in the group that had taken aspirin. This increase in cancer mortality was seen during the first phase of the study (when participants were taking aspirin), but not during the follow-up years after they stopped taking it. This suggests that the effect may not be long-lasting, but it is still concerning.
Associate Professor Suzanne Orchard, the study’s first author, explained that while earlier research in middle-aged adults showed aspirin might reduce cancer risk over the long term, starting aspirin later in life may not offer the same benefit—and might even cause harm.
She emphasized that older adults should not begin a daily aspirin routine in hopes of preventing cancer. Anyone worried about their cancer risk should speak with their doctor about safer and more effective options tailored to their individual health.
This research adds to the growing understanding that medications can have different effects depending on a person’s age and health. What helps younger people may not work the same way—or could be harmful—for older adults.
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