UK launches World’s largest clinical Cancer Trial

The world’s largest ever clinical trial looking at whether taking aspirin every day stops some of the most common cancers coming back, launches across the UK today.
The Add-Aspirin phase III trial, the largest of its kind and funded by Cancer Research UK and the National Institute for Health Research, aims to find out if taking aspirin every day for five years can stop or delay cancers that have been caught and treated at an early stage from returning. It will also study how the drug might do this.
The study will recruit 11,000 patients who have recently had, or are having, treatment for bowel, breast, esophagus, prostate or stomach cancer. It will be open at more than 100 centers across the UK and will run for up to 12 years.
The study will compare two groups of people taking different doses of aspirin and a group taking placebo tablets. There’s been some interesting research suggesting that aspirin could delay or stop early stage cancers coming back, but there’s been no randomized trial to give clear proof. This trial aims to answer this question once and for all.
It’s important not to start taking aspirin until the full results are in, as aspirin isn’t suitable for everyone, and it can have serious side effects.