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Heart drug cuts cancer risk

 A common blood pressure drug taken by millions of Britons could cut the risk of cancer, say scientists.

A major study found that taking ACE inhibitors halves the risk of developing throat, pancreatic and colon cancer.

Between them, these three cancers claim around 30,000 lives every year in the UK.

It is thought the blood pressure drugs may cut the risk of cancer by blocking a protein which tumours need to grow.

UK cancer experts last night described the discovery as 'very exciting' and called for more research to confirm the findings.

ACE inhibitors are currently prescribed to nearly three million Britons to tackle high blood pressure and heart failure.

They work by blocking a protein which would normally make the arteries narrow, and so help lower blood pressure. The tablets are already helping bring down deaths from heart disease, and a recent study suggested they may also help treat Alzheimer's Disease.

Now a team from the Overton Brooks VA Medical Center in Shreveport, Louisiana, has found they may also cut the risk of digestive tract cancers. They studied almost half a million U.S. veterans between October 1998 to June 2004.

During this time, 659 developed throat cancer, 475 got cancer of the pancreas and 6,697 developed cancer of the colon and rectum.

In all, 38 per cent of the veterans were taking some kind of ACE inhibitor for heart and blood pressure problems. When the scientists looked more closely at the results, they found that those on the drugs had a much lower risk of these three cancers than other veterans.

Taking the pills lowered the risk of throat cancer by 55 per cent and the chances of getting pancreatic cancer was cut by 48 per cent. ACE inhibitor use also reduced the risk of developing colon cancer by 47 per cent.

Further studies

Lead researcher Vikas Khurana presented the research yesterday at the Digestive Disorders Week conference in America. He said: "Our results call for further studies to investigate the promising benefits of ACE inhibitors in cancer prevention.

"Through confirmatory research we hope to shed light on the valuable role ACE inhibitors may play in advancing current treatment options for multiple cancers."

Almost seven million Britons are on blood pressure treatments and it is estimated around 40 per cent use ACE inhibitors.

This suggests around 2.8million people are currently taking them in combination with other heart disease and blood pressure treatments.

Prescriptions of ACE inhibitors are likely to rise when new blood pressure guidelines are published shortly by the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence.

NICE is expected to take into account a study last year which showed that thousands of lives could be saved if more people took a kind of ACE inhibitor called Coversyl in combination with another pill called amlodipine, rather than older-style blood pressure drugs.

Last night, Dr Rob Glynne-Jones, medical director of Bowel Cancer UK, said: "This is very intriguing and exciting data. The advantage of an enormous study of 500,000 people is that you have the statistical power to pick up small changes, but this is a really large difference.

"We already know this is a well-tolerated drug that people can take long term.

"In some people it can cause a tickly cough, but the majority of people can tolerate it well without lots of side-effects.

"We now need to work out the precise mechanism involved, and if we can do that, it opens up the way for better and more specific medicines."