In Study, Aspirin Reduces Deaths From Some Cancers

13 December 2010

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BOB DOUGHTY: This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English. I'm Bob Doughty.

FAITH LAPIDUS: And I’m Faith Lapidus. This week, we will tell the story of aspirin.

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BOB DOUGHTY: People have known since ancient times that aspirin lessens pain and lowers high body temperature. But that is not all the drug can do. It has gained important new uses in recent years. Small amounts may help prevent a stroke or heart attack. Some researchers say aspirin may help patients with colon cancer live longer, or may even prevent some cancers.

But doctors also warn that the acid in aspirin can cause problems like bleeding in the stomach and intestines.

FAITH LAPIDUS: So, how did aspirin become so important? The story begins with a willow tree. Two thousand years ago, the Greek doctor Hippocrates advised his patients to chew on the bark and leaves of the willow.

The tree contains a chemical called salicin. In the eighteen hundreds, researchers discovered how to make salicylic acid from the chemical. In eighteen ninety-seven, a chemist named Felix Hoffmann at Friedrich Bayer and Company in Germany created acetyl salicylic acid.

Later, it became the active substance in a medicine that Bayer called aspirin. The "a" came from acetyl. The "spir" came from the spirea plant, which also produces salicin. And the "in"? That is a common way to end medicine names.