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mannyv · 6 months ago
For two specific groups, aspirin reduces the recurrence of colorectal cancer by around 50%.

Group a: 7.7% with aspirin vs 14.1% recurrence without aspirin.

Group b: 7.7% with aspirin vs 16.8% recurrence without aspirin.

What's nice is that these are real occurrences, not relative risk percentages. They don't need fuzzy numbers to make their results significant.

Of course, there's also the line at the bottom: "Severe adverse events occurred in 16.8% of aspirin recipients and 11.6% of placebo recipients." Ouch. So if you can make it past that increase in severe adverse events you'll be fine.

nikolay · 6 months ago
People don't know how to take aspirin! There are side effects other than stomach bleeding, but this most frequent issue is easily countered by taking pure aspirin together with DGL or vitamin C... or maybe both. I've heard it from a person who's in aspirin research taking it with gelatin also addresses the potential bleeding.
sudoshred · 6 months ago
How severe? Worse than colon cancer?
leakycap · 6 months ago
... "with a certain type of genetic alteration in the tumor."

This genetic alteration is found in slightly more than 1/3 of patients.

I guess "Anti-inflammatory medication for 3 years after colorectal surgery reduces relapse risk for 55% of 38% of patients" doesn't have the same hopeful ring to it, but I'd prefer honesty.

coldtea · 6 months ago
For that 38% subset it reduces the risk at 55%, so there's that

(plus 38% is not 0.1%)

leakycap · 6 months ago
No comment other than yours references 38% being at all similar to 0.1%

"So there's that" is not usually slapped on the end of compelling arguments.

Any other reasons to support this style of clickbaity title instead of something intellectually honest that doesn't deflate hope as the reader goes beyond the headline?

add-sub-mul-div · 6 months ago
You quoted the first sentence of the article. The headline is not supposed to contain all information from the article. We are not better off with a norm that we refuse to read past the headline and therefore consider the first paragraph of the actual article to be hidden.
leakycap · 6 months ago
I read the article, hence why I immediately noticed the disconnect. Mary Had a Little Lamb doesn't tell the whole story, but it doesn't say Mary's Magic Lamb Does Her Homework, either.

I guess intellectual dishonesty in links is so common some people don't even care anymore.