Aspirin role in cervical cancer prevention?

Research conducted by NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, USA, global health investigators and cancer specialists in New York, Qatar and Haiti suggests that aspirin should be evaluated for its ability to prevent development of cervical cancer in HIV-infected women.

The report, published in the current issue of journal Cancer Prevention Research, says this simple and inexpensive solution has the potential to provide enormous benefit for women in the Caribbean, Latin America and Africa, who suffer from a disproportionately high rate of cervical cancer death.

Preventive aspirin use could be especially useful in Haiti, where invasive cervical cancer is a common cause of death in HIV-infected women. The country also has the highest reported incidence of cervical cancer in the world and one of the highest HIV infection rates in the Western Hemisphere.

"These young patients - many of whom were mothers and the sole support for their families - had worked hard to have their HIV controlled with antiretroviral therapy, only to develop and die from cervical cancer," says the study's lead researcher, Daniel Fitzgerald, an associate professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College who lived in Haiti for seven years and continues to treat HIV patients there.