A deadly cancer may be fought with medicine as common as aspirin, according to a recent study Live Science reported.

Researchers found that who took low-dose aspirin regularly had 48 percent reduction in their risk for developing pancreatic cancer. This means that the side effects of aspirin, which includes stomach bleeding, may outweigh the benefits for people who are not at high risk for developing the disease.

"We found that the use of low-dose aspirin was associated with cutting the risk of pancreatic cancer in half, with some evidence that the longer low-dose aspirin was used, the lower the risk," said Harvey A. Risch, professor of epidemiology in the Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health. "Because about one in 60 adults will get pancreatic cancer and the five-year survival rate is less than 5 percent, it is crucial to find ways to prevent this disease."

For the study, researchers recruited subjects from the 30 general hospitals in Connecticut between 2005 and 2009. There were 362 pancreatic cancer cases and 690 controls. Study subjects were interviewed in person to determine when they started using aspirin, the number of years they used aspirin, the type of aspirin they used, and when they stopped using aspirin, among other things.

Of the participants, 96 percent of low-dose aspirin users and 92 percent of regular-dose aspirin users reported daily aspirin use.

Based on the findings, protection against pancreatic cancer ranged from 39 percent reduction in risk for those who took low-dose aspirin for six years or less, to 60 percent reduction in risk for those who took low-dose aspirin for more than 10 years.

Researchers concluded that the earlier a person started regularly taking low-dose aspirin, the greater the pancreatic cancer risk reduction, ranging from 48 percent reduction in those who started three years before the study, to 60 percent in those who started taking it 20 years before the study.

The discontinuation of aspirin use within two years prior to the study was associated with a threefold increased risk for pancreatic cancer compared with continuing use.

The findings were recently published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.