In a radio 4 interview in February 2018 I happen to tune in to an interview with a man called John Burn who has spent his life studying genetics.
The programme is described below:
John Burn and the genetics of cancer
The Life ScientificProfessor Sir John Burn, has made Newcastle on Tyne a centre for research on genetics and disease. He was one of the first British doctors to champion the study of genes in medicine back in the 1980s. More recently his research with families with a propensity to develop certain cancers has shown the benefits of taking aspirin as a prevention against the disease. John Burn was part of the team that set up the Centre for Life on derelict industrial land near the River Tyne, where the public can watch research in action. It now attracts a quarter of a million visitors each year to its public science centre. John Burn was knighted for services to medicine in 2010 and was one of first 20 ‘local heroes’ to have a brass plaque on Newcastle Quayside in 2014, alongside Cardinal Hume, Alan Shearer and Ant and Dec.
As a fan of science, I was immediately drawn into the detail and results of John’s studies over his career. Thankfully I caught the interview early on and listened to it in it’s entirety.
One or two comments really caught my attention, including the importance of Aspirin and inflammation on the body.
[17:38 mins]
So the question I’m constantly asked is, how can it be that something as cheap as chips, you can buy over the counter can fix everything? And there are two broad answers to that. One is that inflammatory processors are part of the chronic ill heath that we get and we now know increasingly that both heart disease and cancer is encouraged by inflammatory drivers, so an anti-inflammatory is probably a good idea.
So this raises the question of whether the inflammation caused by Ankylosing Spondylitis increases the risk of cancer? We know it increases the risk of heart disease and if John is right and inflammation is a driver for cancer then it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume AS sufferers have an increased risk of cancer too.
I would encourage everyone to listen to the interview in full and judge for yourself.
The link the show is here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09rxr3t