Researchers led by Dr Vikrant Sahasrabuddhe, from the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics at the National Cancer Institute found that people who said they had taken aspirin at least once a month in the past year were 49 per cent less likely to develop the most common form of liver cancer compared with people who did not take the painkiller.
They were also 50 per cent less likely to die from chronic liver disease in the next ten years, The Telegraph reported.
Aspirin has been hailed as a wonder drug after several studies have now found that it can significantly reduce the risk of cancer developing as well as cutting the chances of a heart attack and stroke.
The latest research published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute used questionnaires from 300,000 people aged 50 to 71 who reported their own use of a range of painkillers in the previous 12 months and linked them to registers of cancer cases and deaths over the following ten to 12 years.
In that time 250 people developed hepatocellular carcinoma and 428 died from chronic liver disease.
Almost half of cases of HCC occur in people who already have chronic liver disease and both are connected to hepatitis infections, alcohol, certain metabolic disorders and diet.
"This is the first large-scale, population-based evidence for reduced risks of liver cancer incidence and liver disease mortality associated with the use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs," Sahasrabuddhe wrote in the journal.
"Aspirin, in particular, when used exclusively or with other non-aspirin NSAIDs showed a consistent protective effect related to both HCC incidence and CLD mortality, regardless of the frequency or exclusivity of use," Sahasrabuddhe said.
In an accompanying comment article Isra Levy and Carolyn Pim, both from the Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine at the University of Ottawa in Canada, said the observations were "promising".
"The investigators make the promising observation that, in a large, prospective, cohort study, use of aspirin and other NSAIDs was associated with lower risk of death due to chronic inflammatory liver disease, and aspirin use was linked to reduced risk of developing HCC," they said.
