Acetylsalicylic Acid

Photo Credit: Acetylsalicylic Acid, Breanne Marois

What do you normally do when you’re in pain? Do you go to your medicine cabinet and reach for a drug to alleviate your headache? Most of us have taken some sort of pain medication in our lives. If you have, have you ever wondered where these drugs come from, and what exactly they do?

You may have heard of acetylsalicylic acid, but it more commonly referred to as Aspirin, which is a brand name for the drug². Acetylsalicylic acid not only relieves pain, but it can also reduce fevers³ and inflammation¹. On top of all of that, it can help to prevent heart attacks and heart disease by acting as a blood thinner³. There can be some side effects of taking acetylsalicylic acid, however, as with any drug, but these side effects are not usually serious².

Acetylsalicylic acid is a very interesting drug, as it is derived from the bark of willow trees. In the late 1700s, leaves and bark from willow trees were used to treat pain and reduce fevers³. Scientists in the 1870s found the chemical, salicin, in willow that produced these pain alleviating, fever reducing properties, and isolated it in a lab so that it could be mass produced for the needs of the population ³. Unfortunately, salicin tastes horrible and reacts with chemicals in the body to form another chemical, salicylic acid, which harms the stomach³. Scientists went back to the drawing board to try and find a better alternative. Finally, in Germany in the 1890s, scientists made acetylsalicylic acid, which has the medicinal properties of salicylic acid without the accompanying horrible taste, or stomach pain³. So when you take acetylsalicylic acid for your headache in the future, you can stop and think that it only exists because people in the 20^th century decided to chew willow bark to alleviate their pain.

As with any drug, only take the recommended dose of acetylsalicylic acid, as taking too much can lead to serious side effects or death¹. 



References

1. Drugbank. Acetylsalicylic acid, 2017. https://www.drugbank.ca/drugs/DB00945 (accessed Oct 14, 2017).

2. PubChem. Aspirin, 2017. https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/aspirin (accessed Oct 14, 2017).

3. Lewis, D. Aspirin, 2nd ed.; Royal Society of Chemistry: London, 2003.