Could aspirin be a lifesaver for prostate cancer patients in prostate cancer-specific mortality?: an update systematic review and meta-analysis

Background Currently, clinical studies on the prognosis of prostate cancer (PC) taking aspirin were developing, but the precise mechanism of aspirin on tumor cells was still unclear. In addition, the conclusion that aspirin can improve the prognosis of PC patients continues to be controversial. Therefore, we collected comprehensive literatures and performed our study to explore the prognostic effect of aspirin on PC. Methods A comprehensive literature search was performed in April 2019 based on PUBMED. EMBASE. Hazard Ratio (HR) as well as its 95% confidence interval (CIs) for prostate cancer specific mortality (PCSM) was extracted from eligible studies. Result A total of 10 eligible articles were used in our study. The pooled results showed that PC patients who used aspirin or taking aspirin did not have lower PCSM than those who had not used (HR =0.89, 95% CI: 0.73–1.08, P >0.05). In subgroup analysis, we found that taking aspirin before diagnosis of prostate cancer and taking aspirin after diagnosis of prostate cancer did not have significant association with PCSM. (pre-diagnostic use, HR = 0.88, 95% CI: 0.72–1.06; post-diagnosis use, HR = 0.88, 95% CI: 0.67–1.17). In addition, we found no significant association between aspirin use or its duration and the risk of PCSM. Another important result demonstrated that aspirin use was not associated with risk of PSCM in either high risk (T ≥ 3 and/or Gleason score ≥ 8) or low risk PC patients(low-risk PC, HR = 1.05, 95% CI: 0.81–1.35; high-risk PC, HR = 0.97, 95% CI: 0.75–1.24). Conclusion Our results demonstrated that there was no significant association between aspirin use and the risk of PCSM. At the same time, the dosage and duration of aspirin use had no statistical influence on the risk of PCSM in high/low risk PC. Further studies are needed to confirm the findings.