Eric Metcalfe, author of The Wonderful Use of Aspirin, claims: "An aspirin a day keeps you away from the doctor." In his book, he discussed the latest medical progress of aspirin in preventing and treating breast cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer, Parkinson's disease, osteoporosis and other diseases. By 2007, the application of aspirin to prevent heart disease has become the primary medical preventive measure recommended by the American Preventive Services Working Group in 2007, along with children's immunization and smoking cessation preventive measures. No wonder Bekma, the former chairman of Bayer, proudly said that taking two aspirin a day has almost become an American tradition.
The history of 1 10 is enough for people to see clearly. There are at least two reasons to promote aspirin as a commodity: low price and Bayer's vigorous promotion. New uses of aspirin are always being discovered, but it is very complicated to prove these additional functions, and it is even more complicated to turn them into commodity sales. In the past 1 10 years, what Bayer has to do is to maximize the potential of this drug through repeated marketing, and then firmly grasp the benefits of this product in its own hands through patents and trademarks.
18 On March 6th, 1999, the patent application for aspirin invention was approved, and the product patent number was 36433. Aspirin began to be produced at the Elberford factory in Wuppertal, Germany. Its inventor, 29-year-old German chemist Felix? Hoffman was informed by his tutor that he stopped studying coal tar and began to specialize in a drug-improving salicylic acid to make a stable antipyretic and analgesic drug with less side effects.
Hoffman is no stranger to this drug, and this thing is not a new invention. But he needs to transform this antipyretic and analgesic drug with a long history and transform it from earth to commercial medicine. In the early days, Hoffman's father with rheumatism took salicylic acid to reduce fever and relieve pain, but the vomiting and stomach discomfort caused by it were unbearable. His father has been asking him if he can find a way to make salicylic acid work without such side effects.
Hoffman combed a series of papers and finally found a way to produce acetylsalicylic acid (ASA, the main component of aspirin) with stable side effects. Fortunately for other product developers, he has a powerful company behind him.
Bayer did two things that other pharmaceutical companies disdain to do. One is to give the chemical acetylsalicylic acid a brand name "aspirin", and the other is to register a patent right for its production process in many countries.
At that time, the requirements for doctors were not high. As long as the drugs were stable and the side effects were small, it was enough for doctors to recognize that health was still a luxury in the early 20 th century. An American born in 1900 can only live to be about 49 years old. The diseases with the highest mortality rate include pneumonia, tuberculosis, enteritis and typhoid fever, most of which are caused by polluted water and food. Therefore, like Europe, aspirin soon became the first choice of antipyretic and analgesic drugs. Aspirin can be bought in pharmacies from Siberia to San Francisco.
Aspirin soon became a fan of doctors. The United States has become one of Bayer's most important overseas markets, and aspirin has become Bayer's most important product in the United States. By 1907, aspirin accounted for 2 1% of the total sales of Bayer products in the United States, and by 1909 it reached 3 1%.
Initially, aspirin was supplied in the form of 250g bottled powder, which was put into paper bags every kloc-0/g and distributed to patients. Later, aspirin was introduced to the world in the form of 500mg tablets, and then the tubular reagent was listed as 1904. 19 15 Aspirin is a tablet, and it doesn't need a doctor's prescription.
However, Bayer's influence on academic and medical circles is still strong, which laid the foundation for aspirin to usher in the second peak of commercial demand.
The most promising application field of aspirin market-heart disease prevention is not dominated by Bayer. Bayer's ability is reflected in that aspirin has been proved academically to prevent heart disease. After government agencies completed expensive clinical trials, Bayer quickly began to intervene, using its best marketing and patented chips to maximize the influence of this drug.
/kloc-in the 1940s, Lawrence craven, a California otolaryngologist, noticed a strange thing. He gave a patient with tonsillitis a relatively large dose of aspirin, which would lead to excessive bleeding. This reminds him that aspirin may increase blood supply, which is a way to protect the heart. So he began to treat his elderly male patients with aspirin from 1948 to help them reduce the incidence of heart disease. By the mid-1960s, he had published several papers, claiming that none of his more than 8,000 patients had suffered from heart disease, and aspirin could help them prevent strokes.
His understanding of the effect of aspirin on the heart was contrary to the understanding of the whole world at that time, but it turned out that he was right. Unfortunately, his data is rough, the journals that publish papers are not famous enough, and the audience is limited, so his achievements have not attracted much attention. His discovery didn't even help him. He died of a heart attack on 1957.
At that time, it was considered absurd that aspirin could protect the heart. Because when people take salicylic acid to reduce fever and relieve pain, many people will have shortness of breath and rapid heartbeat. When aspirin was first synthesized in Bayer's laboratory, it stayed in the laboratory for a long time, precisely because Bayer's medical director was not sure about its effect on the heart. In order to solve this problem, a Bayer scientist carefully studied the historical dose of salicylic acid and found that when using a smaller dose of aspirin, its side effects on the heart would be less. Later, Bayer commissioned several German doctors to conduct clinical trials quietly, and dared to formally develop this drug after it was proved to be safe enough for the heart.
Until the 1960s, Bayer kept a high degree of vigilance against the effects of aspirin on the heart. Charles Hennekens, a professor at Harvard University and an aspirin expert, published an aspirin advertisement in the Journal of the American Medical Association at 1950' s, in which a series of words specifically guaranteed that aspirin would not affect the heart.
Until 197 1 year, scientists found that aspirin can ensure the coagulation of platelets in the blood, thus maintaining the blood supply to the heart and protecting the heart. However, in the whole1970s, there were too few clinical studies on aspirin to prevent heart disease to convince the public.
At this time, Bayer's academic marketing for decades began to play a role. The influence of this drug, coupled with its extremely cheap price, makes more academic personnel devote themselves to the clinical research of this drug. Soon, academic evidence of aspirin preventing cardiovascular diseases appeared continuously. 1977 After a study published in the American Journal of Stroke proved for the first time that aspirin can prevent stroke, more and more studies confirming the preventive effect of aspirin on cardiovascular and cerebrovascular events were published in the world's authoritative medical journals.
Bayer can't take all the credit in the process of turning aspirin from a drug into a commodity. What diseases aspirin can be used for still needs large-scale clinical research approved by FDA to prove. This kind of research needs huge financial resources, but it is not Bayer, but the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Physician's research is the key for aspirin to become a primary preventive drug for myocardial infarction. This study was organized by NIH in 1983, and 2207 1 American healthy male doctors participated. The purpose of this large-scale clinical study is to evaluate whether low-dose aspirin can prevent the first myocardial infarction in healthy people. The doctors who participated in the study carried and took research drugs around the world, and the average follow-up time was 5 years.
This study, which originally took eight years, was terminated prematurely by the Ethics Committee in the fifth year. The reason is that aspirin is so effective The mid-term results of the study prove that aspirin can reduce the risk of myocardial infarction by 44%, the incidence of the first fatal myocardial infarction by 66%, and the incidence of the first myocardial infarction in diabetic patients by 665,438+0%. The Ethics Committee believes that doctors in the control group have the right to take low-dose aspirin to prevent coronary heart disease in order to benefit from it. From 65438 to 0988, the results of this research were published in Newsweek, which caused a great sensation.
Similarly, the women's health research on aspirin included nearly 40 thousand American female medical workers, which lasted for ten years; The research on nurses' health included 6.5438+0.2 million American female nurses, which lasted for 24 years. These researches, which were personally participated by medical workers, greatly promoted the development of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease prevention, and also marked that aspirin passed the most rigorous test in the research and development stage.
197 1 year, Bayer effervescent tablets containing aspirin and vitamin c came out; Bayer aspirin enteric-coated tablets 1993 went on sale. The enteric-coated tablets are coated with aspirin. This tablet does not dissolve in the stomach until it acts in the intestine, which almost completely solves the side effects of stomach discomfort. In 2003, Bayer aspirin granules (excluding drinking water) came out. In 2007, a study published in The Lancet magazine showed that the incidence of colon cancer could be reduced from 10 after treatment to 15 by using 300 mg or high dose aspirin every day for five years, a decrease of 74%. This confirms the research of Professor G.Kune of Australia (1988), which is regarded by Bayer as the third leap of aspirin after antipyretic analgesia and prevention of heart disease.
The development of aspirin has been promoted by both business and science. Bayer has been considering this issue for 1 10 years, and I am afraid it will continue to be considered.