Common Pain Killers Can Mask Signs of Prostate Cancer

Common painkillers taken on a regular basis, such as ibuprofen and aspirin, appear to lower a man's PSA level, the blood biomarker used by doctors to help gauge whether a man is at a risk of getting prostate cancer.

The authors of this new study, however, caution that men should not take the painkillers in an effort to prevent prostate cancer. An author on this study Eric A Singer M.D., M.A., a urology resident at the University of Rochester Medical Center, said, "We showed that men who regularly took certain medications like aspirin and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDS, had a lower serum PSA level.... But there's not enough data to say that men who took the medications were less likely to get prostate cancer. This was a limited study, and we do not know how many of those men actually got prostate cancer."

Singer and his team studind the records of approximately 1,319 men that were over the age of 40 who took part in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey between the years 2001 and 2002. Singer's team looked at the men's use of NSAIDs such as ibuprofen and aspirin, as well as acetaminophen, and they looked at their PSA levels. The level of a man's PSA, or prostate-specific antigen, is one of the numerous clues that doctors watch to gauge the risk a man has of getting prostate cancer.

The researchers found that men who did use NSAIDs on a regular basis had PSA levels that were about 10 percent lower than the men who did not use them. The team then made a similar observation with the pain killer acetaminophen, but the result was not statistically significant due to the lower number of men in the study that were taking that medication.

While it might be easily assumed that if you have lower PSA levels that this automatically translates to a low risk of getting prostate cancer, the authors stress that it is still too soon to draw that kind of conclusion. The corresponding author of the study Edwin van Wijngaarden, Ph.D., and the assistant professor in the Department of Community and Preventative Medicine states that while the results of this study are consistent with other research, and indicates that certain commonly used painkillers may reduce a man's risk of getting prostate cancer, the new findings are just preliminary and do not prove a link.

Singer stated that the PSA level of a man can be elevated for many reasons that are unrelated to cancer. For instance, while inflammation is a part of cancer, sometimes it may not be, and so it is possible that the lowered level of PSA reflects the reduction of inflammation without affecting a man's risk of getting prostatism. Also, another possibility is that a PSA level that this lowered by taking NSAIDs might artificially mask a man's risk of contracting prostate cancer. The pain medications could lower the PSA, but a man's risk might stay the exact same.

Singer says, "More than anything, these findings underscore the importance for doctors to know what medications their patients are on. For instance, there are medications commonly used to treat an enlarged prostate that can result in a decreased PSA, and most physicians know that. Doctors should also be asking about patients' use of NSAIDs such as aspirin and ibuprofen."

The data is said to show much interest, but it will take more research to determine how to interpret all the findings. In the meantime, these findings should not change men's behavior and prompt them to take these pain medications to try and prevent themselves from getting prostate cancer.