Aspirin's Role Turns from Pain Alleviation to Disease Prevention.

Byline: Laura Beil

Nov. 18--Perhaps Hippocrates should get credit for barking up the right tree.

In 400 B.C., the Greek physician prescribed willow bark and leaves, unaware that the plant held a potent substance called salicin. German chemists turned salicin into salicylic acid in the 1800s.

But aspirin itself wasn't born until 1897, when chemist Felix Hoffman sought a remedy for his father's crippling arthritis. Now, more than 100 years later, it appears aspirin's ultimate calling may be disease prevention, not pain treatment.

Studies dating from the 1970s suggested that aspirin could protect the heart. Research since then has not only confirmed aspirin's power to defend against heart disease and strokes, but also hinted that aspirin might have a role in protecting people from colon cancer, lung cancer, ovarian cancer, pancreatic cancer, Alzheimer's disease, migraine headaches and other conditions.

Some reports from early-stage research have raised the possibility that aspirin might be able to quash viruses in the bloodstream, and affect some part of allergic flare-ups.

Even some long-held assumptions about aspirin have recently been shattered. Doctors once discouraged patients from taking aspirin before coronary artery bypass surgery, fearing an increase in bleeding. But research published last month in The New England Journal of Medicine reported that people who took aspirin before the operation actually…