What is aspirin?
A: Aspirin is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) used to reduce
pain, fever, and/or inflammation.
Medicines made from willow and other salicylate-rich
plants appear in what?
A: Clay tablets from ancient Sumer as well as the Ebers Papyrus from ancient
Egypt.
Hippocrates referred to the use of salicylic tea to do
what?
A: To reduce fevers around 400 BC, and willow bark preparations were part of
the pharmacopoeia of Western medicine in classical antiquity and the Middle
Ages.
Willow bark extract became recognized for its specific
effects on what?
A: Fever, pain, and inflammation in the mid-eighteenth century.
By the nineteenth century, pharmacists were
experimenting with and prescribing a variety of chemicals related to what?
A: Salicylic acid, the active component of willow extract.
Specific inflammatory conditions which aspirin is used
to treat include what?
A: Kawasaki disease, pericarditis, and rheumatic fever.
Aspirin is also used long-term to help prevent what?
A: Further heart attacks, ischaemic strokes, and blood clots in people at
high risk.
For pain or fever, effects typically begin within how
long?
A: 30 minutes.
Aspirin works similarly to other NSAIDs but also does
what?
A: Suppresses the normal functioning of platelets.
One common adverse effect is a what?
A: An upset stomach.
More significant side effects include stomach ulcers,
stomach bleeding, and what?
A: Worsening asthma.
Bleeding risk is greater among whom?
A: Those who are older, drink alcohol, take other NSAIDs, or are on other
blood thinners.
Aspirin is not recommended in the last part of what?
A: Pregnancy.
Why is it not generally recommended in children with
infections?
A: Because of the risk of Reye syndrome.
What may result in ringing in the ears?
A: High doses.
A precursor to aspirin found in the bark of what tree?
A: The willow tree (genus Salix).
How long has it been used for its
health effects?
A: For at least 2,400 years.
In 1853, chemist Charles Frédéric Gerhardt treated the
medicine sodium salicylate with acetyl chloride to produce what for the
first time?
A: Acetylsalicylic acid (Asprin).
Aspirin is one of the most widely used medications
globally, with how many pills consumed each year?
A: An estimated 50 to 120 billion pills.
It is on the World Health Organization's List of what?
A: Essential Medicines.
In 2019, it was the 38th most commonly prescribed
medication in the United States, with how many prescriptions?
A: More than 18 million prescriptions.
In 1897, scientists at what company began studying
acetylsalicylic acid as a less-irritating replacement medication for common
salicylate medicines?
A: The Bayer company.
By 1899, Bayer had named it "Aspirin" and sold it
where?
A: Around the world.
Aspirin's popularity grew over the first half of the
20th century, leading to what?
A: Competition between many brands and formulations.
The word Aspirin was Bayer's brand name; however, their
rights to the trademark were what?
A: Lost or sold in many countries.
Like flour mills, factories producing aspirin tablets
must control what?
A: The amount of the powder that becomes airborne inside the building,
because the powder-air mixture can be explosive.
Formulations containing high concentrations of aspirin
often smell like what?
A: Vinegar because aspirin can decompose through hydrolysis in moist
conditions, yielding salicylic and acetic acids.
In 1971, British pharmacologist John Robert Vane, then
employed by the Royal College of Surgeons in London, showed that aspirin did
what?
A: Aspirin suppressed the production of prostaglandins and thromboxanes.
For this discovery he was awarded what?
A: The 1982 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, jointly with Sune
Bergström and Bengt Ingemar Samuelsson.
Heart attacks are caused primarily by blood clots, and
low doses of aspirin are seen as what?
A: an effective medical intervention to prevent a second acute myocardial
infarction.
Aspirin is readily broken down in the body to salicylic
acid, which itself has what?
A: Anti-inflammatory, antipyretic, and analgesic effects.
As much as 80% of therapeutic doses of salicylic acid
is metabolized where?
A: In the liver.
Aspirin's popularity declined after the development of
what?
A: Acetaminophen/paracetamol in 1956 and ibuprofen in 1962.
Aspirin sales revived considerably in the last decades
of the 20th century and remain strong in the 21st century with widespread
use as a what?
A: A preventive treatment for heart attacks and strokes.
