Aspirin might prevent all sorts of cancer

A couple of recent studies show that Aspirin might prevent throat and skin cancer. This adds to the growing list of other ills the little white pills seem to prevent, including stroke, heart attack and colon cancer.

The throat cancer prevention is primarily in people with Barrett's esophagus. Barrett's is a condition that is usually caused by excessive acid reflux disease (GERD). It's ironic, since aspirin is itself an acid that is a cause of stomach irritation. People with Barrett's who took aspirin (or other NSAIDs) had about a 68% lower risk of getting cancer than their counterparts who did not take it. This is a big finding since people with Barrett's are at a higher risk for throat cancer. I'm still unclear on what the daily dosage was. As I'm too poor to afford a subscription to the Lancet, but here's a summary article from Forbes.

Japanese study links coffee drinking with reduced liver cancer risk

I couldn't even make this stuff up. I don't want to bore you with the details....but a Japanese study (published February 2005 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute) of about 90,000 middle-aged and elderly people shows that habitually drinking coffee cut the risk of liver cancer in half. The conclusion of the study's abstract states that "In the Japanese population, habitual coffee drinking may be associated with reduced risk of HCC [liver cancer]" You can read the abstract here.