Our Aspirin Rose

In these months of Covid 19 induced home isolation households with gardens can consider themselves very fortunate. Several years before the pandemic, a cardiothoracic surgeon friend of ours who knew about the green-fingered talent of my wife, gave us a budding rosebush as a present. Very aptly it was an “Aspirin rose”, named in memory of the centenary of the drug in 1997 by the renowned rose growers Tantau in Uetersen.

The bush was given a half-sunny space and ever since, between June and September, proved to be a constant delight of white blossoms stemming from pink buds. A charming pecularity is the slight change of color after cool nights which evoke a beautiful pink in the center of the rose. We are still waiting for a pain-killing effect when inhaling the faint and discrete fragrance, but one can't get everything, I guess.

Our rose, however, made me read a bit about the fascinating background and history of the eponymous drug which we encounter every day as part of the “staple diet” of our patients, usually in a dosage of 100 mg per day. It seems that the beneficial effect to reduce fever of salicylate-rich willow bark was already known to the ancient Egyptians and Hippocrates. In 1897 a group of chemists working for the Bayer company was looking into ways to make salicylic acid more palatable. The solution proved to be acetyl-salicylic acid which was soon branded as Aspirin.

Today, it is estimated that an unimaginable mass of 40,000 tons (!) is consumed worldwide every year.[1] On second thoughts this is not that much at all: taken a world population of 7.77 billion and 40 billion grams of Aspirin, it breaks down to ∼500 mg per person, equalling one pain killer dosage, per year. Like with money, the distribution is quite inhomogeneous. There seem to be ∼19 million annual prescriptions in the USA alone,[2] where it is an over-the-counter drug and can be bought in plastic bottles of 500 tablets of 325 mg each. The incredibly low price of generic manufacturers makes the drug a favorite on the shopping lists of many foreign visitors including myself.

An interesting piece of information I learned was that another drug was developed by Bayer in parallel as a cough suppressant. Because of insecurities about potential side effects of Aspirin, this drug (diacetylmorphine) was preferentially advertised by the marketing department under the catchy brand name “Heroin”.[3] Coincidentally, we also grow some poppies in our garden.

Publication History

Article published online:
28 June 2021

• References

• 1 Warner TD, Mitchell JA. Cyclooxygenase-3 (COX-3): filling in the gaps toward a COX continuum?. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2002; 99 (21) 13371-13373
• 2 https://clincalc.com/DrugStats/Drugs/Aspirin , last accessed April 30, 2021
• 3 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetylsalicylsäure , last accessed April 30, 2021