By LAURAN NEERGAARD
The Associated Press
Wednesday, February 18, 2004

WASHINGTON - Scientists have found a hint that regular aspirin use might lower the risk of Hodgkin's disease, but more research is needed to prove it.

Even if the link is real, Hodgkin's is too rare a cancer to recommend aspirin as a preventive, scientists caution, since the pills can have side effects. Instead, the research may point toward better understanding of how this cancer forms, important for future work on treatments.

Millions of Americans already take low-dose aspirin to help prevent heart attacks, and studies suggest it also may modestly lower the risk of a few cancers, most notably colon cancer.

Scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health uncovered aspirin's possible connection with Hodgkin's - a lymph system cancer diagnosed in 7,600 Americans a year - while studying what role a certain virus plays in the malignancy.

To hunt risk factors, they matched 565 Hodgkin's patients with people of similar age and demographics who didn't have the cancer.

Those who regularly used aspirin - the equivalent of two or more regular-strength tablets a week for five years - had a 40 percent lower risk of Hodgkin's, researchers reported Tuesday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.