Research Into Cancer Prevention
The role that celecoxib might have in reducing the rates of certain cancers has been the subject of many studies. However, given the side effects of anti-COX-2 on rates of heart disease, there is no current medical recommendation to use this drug for cancer reduction.
Colorectal cancer risk is clearly reduced in people regularly taking a NSAID like aspirin or celecoxib. In addition, some epidemiological studies, and most preclinical studies pointed out that specific COX-2 inhibitors like celecoxib are more potent and less toxic than "older" NSAIDs. Twelve carcinogenesis studies support that celecoxib is strikingly potent to prevent intestinal cancer in rats or mice. Small-scale clinical trials in very high risk people (belonging to FAP families) also indicate that celecoxib can prevent polyp growth. Hence large-scale randomized clinical trials were undertaken and results published by N. Arber and M. Bertagnolli in The New England Journal of Medicine, August 2006. Results show a 33 to 45% polyp recurrence reduction in people taking 400–800 mg celecoxib each day. However, serious cardiovascular events were significantly more frequent in the celecoxib-treated groups (see above, cardiovascular toxicity). Aspirin shows a similar (and possibly larger) protective effect, has demonstrated cardioprotective effects and is significantly cheaper, but there have been no head-to-head clinical trials comparing the two drugs.
Read more about this topic: Celecoxib
Famous quotes containing the words research, cancer and/or prevention:
“I did my research and decided I just had to live it.”
—Karina O’Malley, U.S. sociologist and educator. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A5 (September 16, 1992)
“Madness is locked beneath. It goes into tissues, is swallowed by the cells. The cells go mad. Cancer is their flag. Cancer is the growth of madness denied.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“... if this world were anything near what it should be there would be no more need of a Book Week than there would be a of a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.”
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)