Aspirin and colorectal disease

I thought I had posted something about this last month but apparently not. In addition to helping prevent cardiovasular disease, aspirin has also been found to protect against colorectal disease, including for those patients who've already had problems. From the New York Times:

It has long been known that people who took aspirin regularly were less likely to develop tumors of the colon, and now a study has found that even after a diagnosis of colorectal cancer, patients who took aspirin had a much better chance of surviving than non-users.

The improvements in outcomes were striking. Patients with colorectal cancer who regularly used aspirin before and after a diagnosis were almost one-third less likely to die of the disease than non-users. Patients who initiated aspirin use only after a diagnosis did even better and had half the risk of dying from the cancer, possibly because of differences in their tumors. The patients were all being treated for nonmetastatic, or localized, cancers, and were followed for almost 12 years on average.

As always, talk to your doctor about what's right for you. I've been taking an enteric-coated 81 mg daily aspirin for about ten years.