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Ten things you never knew about… aspirin

1. Aspirin was first synthesised in Germany in 1899 from an extract of white willow bark (Salix alba).

2. Willow bark became popular in the 18th century as a treatment for fevers. It was a cheap substitute for cinchona bark (forerunner of the modern drug quinine), which had to be imported from Latin America.

3. Global consumption of aspirin has recently been estimated at about 40,000 tons per year.

4. Traditionally, aspirin has mainly been used for fever, pain and inflammation … and it is still one of the most powerful anti-inflammatory agents known.

5. In the last decade there has been a massive increase in the clinical use of aspirin to prevent and treat heart attacks and strokes.

An aspirin taken at the onset of a heart attack reduces the risk of death by over 20%.

6. Trials in which healthy, British and American doctors took ‘an aspirin a day’ have thrown up confusing results. While the risk of heart attack fell, the risk of stroke due to cerebral haemorrhage increased … and the death rate remained unchanged overall.

7. Aspirin reduces the resistance of the stomach lining to acid, and may lead to ‘erosions’, or ulcers.

8. A possible link between regular aspirin use and kidney cancer has recently been suggested … but the evidence is controversial.

9. The number of reported aspirin overdoses has been falling since the early 1970s, contrasting sharply with a rapid rise in the number of paracetamol overdoses after 1974.

The increase is probably just a reflection of which drug is most likely to be at hand in the home.

10. Dioscorides, a Greek physician writing 2,000 years ago on the subject of white willow leaves, stated that ‘a decoction of them is an excellent fomentation for the gout.’