Apr 01, 2014 11:31 AM EDT By Jaleesa Baulkman, UniversityHerald Reporter

A low-dose of aspirin could add extra years to the lives of colon cancer patients, according to a recent study HealthDay reported.

Researchers found that 37.9 percent of colon cancer patients who regularly took aspirin died compared with 48.5 percent of those who didn't take aspirin.

The study, recently published in JAMA Internal Medicine, concluded that people with colon cancer gain a survival benefit by taking aspirin after diagnosis.

"If our results are confirmed by others and aspirin is studied as a treatment in a proper phase three randomized trial, then we would have a valid new anti-cancer treatment that is both safe and cheap," study author Gerrit Jan Liefers of Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands told Live Science. "In a world were new targeted therapies usually cost thousands of dollars and most have serious side effects, this would mean great progress."

For the study, researchers recruited nearly 1,000 patients with colon cancer and tracked them for between four and 10 years. They analyzed the tissue of tumors of the participants who had undergone surgery between 2002 and 2008. Among the cohort, 182 were aspirin users, and 69 of these patients died by January 2012. On the other hand, 396 of the 817 patients who didn't take aspirin died.

Researchers said their study is not conclusive.

Study lead author Dr. Marlies Reimers, a doctoral student at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands, told HealthDay that colon cancer patients should not begin aspirin as a result of these findings.  

Liefers added that the study does not prove that people with colon cancer should start taking aspirin.

"We have to await the results of a randomized trial before we can recommend aspirin as a valid anti-cancer treatment," he said.

Colon cancer is a cancer from uncontrolled cell growth in the colon or rectum. It is the fourth most common cancer in the United States, but ranks second in number of yearly deaths.

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