Aspirin can treat cancer pains as effectively as morphine, new study suggests
- Sydney Uni study: Non-addictive aspirin as good as opioids for cancer pain
An aspirin may be as effective as powerful opioid painkillers for people suffering from cancer, a new study suggests.
Addictive drugs such as morphine are often prescribed by the NHS to combat the constant pain that many cancer patients experience as a result of their tumors.
But new research has found that there is little evidence to support the use of these pain-suppressing medications to treat the disease.
Scientists now believe that weaker, non-addictive medications – including aspirin – may be just as effective at helping prevent these symptoms, while also causing fewer side effects. They also concluded that the strong opioids may actually negatively impact the body's ability to fight cancer.
The research, conducted by scientists from the University of Warwick and the University of Sydney, comes as the NHS continues to crack down on opioid addiction.
An aspirin (pictured) may be as effective as powerful opioid painkillers for people suffering from cancer, a new study suggests
Addictive drugs such as morphine are often prescribed by the NHS to combat the constant pain that many cancer patients experience as a result of their tumors (stock photo of opioids)
Over the past four years, the number of prescriptions for these drugs in England has halved – but this push has been mainly focused on non-cancer pain.
Researchers examined data from more than 150 clinical trials of the use of opioids to treat cancer symptoms and found that the evidence supporting the use of the strong painkillers was weak, with “very few” studies comparing their effect with placebo medications.
The available evidence suggests that weaker medications, including antidepressants, aspirin and low-strength opioids including codeine, were as effective at reducing cancer-related pain as powerful opioids such as morphine – which some studies suggest damage the immune system.
But the study did conclude that patients who were unable to reduce their pain with standard painkillers did benefit from a small dose of the synthetic opioid fentanyl – but only if the highly addictive drug was used sparingly.
The researchers also noted that fentanyl was associated with a significant number of side effects.
“Opioids are essential for intractable pain and anxiety at the end of life,” says Professor Jane Ballantyne, a pain medicine expert at the University of Washington School of Medicine. 'But it's worth emphasizing that non-opioids are surprisingly effective for some cancer pains and can prevent the problems of dependency.'