High-dose aspirin consumption contributes to decreased risk for pancreatic cancer in a systematic review and meta-analysis

The aim of this study was to analyze the association between aspirin intake and its effect for chemoprevention of pancreatic cancer incidence by using a meta-analysis method. The databases of MEDLINE, EMBASE, and Wangfang (Chinese database) were retrieved to identify eligible studies. Odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) were calculated using a random-effects model. A total of 10 studies (4 case-control studies, 5 prospective cohort studies, and 1 randomized controlled trial) with 7,252 cases of pancreatic cancer and more than 120,0000 healthy control subjects were enrolled in the studies. Pooled analyses showed that high-dose aspirin intake was marginally associated with decreased risk for pancreatic cancer for overall analysis (OR, 0.88; 95% CI, 0.76-1.01) as well as for both cohort and case-control studies (OR, 0.70; 95% CI, 0.54-1.16, for the cohort studies; OR, 0.82; 95% CI, 0.62-1.02, for the case-control studies), without between-study heterogeneity. Stratified analysis for Americans showed a similar result (OR, 0.82; 95% CI, 0.65-1.02). In contrast, our study inferred that low-dose aspirin intake was not associated with risk for pancreatic cancer for the total and subgroup analyses. In summary, our study indicated that high-dose aspirin, rather than low-dose aspirin, might be associated with decreased risk for pancreatic cancer, especially for Americans.