What you need to know about aspirin, UK standard
Common drugs are usually abused, like aspirin, which contains paracetamol. The abuse is often unknowingly due to lack of awareness and purchase monitoring.
We delve deeper into the study of usage and production of aspirin in general. The study, as presented in the United Kingdom standard, delves into everything about aspirin and how it can be used to avoid abuse.
Drug abuse in Nigeria is a constant topic, with the government at crossroads as to how to control the abuse. This UK pattern can be adopted by Nigeria and other African countries to curb drug abuse.
Curtailment has to start with indepth knowledge of what one is taking and knowing how it works. Starting from absorption to excretion.
When the knowledge has been impacted, the government has to come into the equation and help moderate the purchase and distribution, ensuring that standard practice is adhered to.
What Is Aspirin?
Aspirin is known as acetylsalicylic acid and is used for addressing pains and aches. it is prepared by chemical synthesis from salicylic acid through acetylation with acetic anhydride.
It has no odure and weighs 180.16g/mol. It has no colour. It’s function includes getting rid of colds and flu related symptoms. Aspirin can also be used to handle high temperatures, as it can lower a temperature.
Use:
The general use of aspirin can not be underestimated as it can be used on multiple patients and can address multiple issues. Due to the content of aspirin, most medical practitioners have often embraced the use of aspirin with the understanding that it’s a combination of paracetamol, Ibuprofen, and anti-inflammatory
Aspirin, therefore, is a common drug for getting rid of pain, swelling, and high temperatures as a result of fever and blood thinner. Aspirin can also be used to proactively avoid heart attack or stroke because it can prevent clot and heart tissue death.
Absorption:
Aspirin metabolism is not yet complete. The study of the metabolism is continuing due to the complexity of the functions. There are stages of the metabolism, where the first stage begets another to shape the complexity.
Salicate is the active metabolite mainly for all of the anti-inflammatory and analhesic effects of aspirin. The metabolism takes effect in the lever after absorption. Salicate spreads rapidly into the body fluid structures and binds to the albumin in the plasma.
When there is a complete plasma salicylate focus, unbound fraction rises, and sometimes, it crosses the placental barrier and circulates into breast milk for women.
Absorption of aspirin takes place in the stomach, in the alkaline surroundings of the small intestine, where it is chemically hydrolyzed.
Breakdown of the salicylate happens dually in two processes through the cration of salicyluric acid and salicyl phenolic glucuronide.
The intestinal absorption of aspirin increases as surge of hydrogen ion, ascorbic acid, etc. perfustae increased. In a more ionized form, the small bowel absorbs aspirin more effectively compared to the stomach.
There are fewer known factors than can hamper the absorption of aspirin, but at pH 3.5 or 6.5, a small bowel reaction to aspirin is greater than gastric absorption of the compound.
Aspirin has a rate of distribution of almost 0.2 L kg’1 and is 90% protein destined. The serum half-life of acetylsalicylic acid is barely 15 minutes, but that of salicylate is almost 6 hours.
So, the distribution of aspirin is multiple with different time of transportation life.
After absorption in the small bowel, further absorption takes place in the GI tract, where it is transported to all tissues of the body.
The processes that occur before the transportation are broken down into salicylic acid before the liver transforms it into metabolite. The maximum focus of salicylate in the plasma happens 1 to 2 hours after ingestion
Excretion:
Excretion of aspirin is quite different. It’s excreted through the kidney, and it remains the only way it is excreted. Its excretion is speed up with the help of alkaline unrine and often takes more than three days for a complete or total excretion from the body. Exretion occurs after the half-life of aspirin in the bloodstream and that of metabolite salicylate ends after 13-19 minutes and 3-5 hours, respectively.
Abuse Control:
Medidine act is the key to a safe drug use and production. Medicine Act has done enough job of keeping medicine production safe for human application. The establishment of Medines and healthcare products regulatory agency has gone a long way to ensuring drugs are produced in a safe environment and with a standard that is not harmful to consumers.
The body inspects and licensed companies and establishments that deal with drug production. Licensing goes through a rigorous check, which has brought about legal and ethical production of aspirin.
The general sales list contributes to illegal usage of drugs and appears to be a remarkable challenge facing ethical usage of drugs.
With MHPRA concentration, the work is not finished if the GSL is not managed or checked. Aspirin being a GSL is legal, due to the range of common issues it addresses, but there must be further check of buyers, and too much use or overdose of aspirin should be discouraged as it could lead to fatalities.
PO. Purchase order should be kept and updated to enable adequate monitoring of aspirin users. This is important to control or question addiction or excess use of aspirin.
Due to aspirin being taken by mouth, there is usually no third party to monitor a user or direct a user who appears addicted. But by monitoring with purchase order, excessive use of aspirin can be effectively controlled.
Aspirin should advisably be placed under POM due to the common usage of the drug, which is likely to be abused. Flu, cold, and temperature lowering should be addressed by other drugs with less side effects compared to aspirin.
POM is important when dealing with aspirin because the flu-related systems and cold are common, and there are other medicines that can address them. in the UK, most people take aspirin as the first go-to when they have flu-related symptoms without knowing there are much more to aspirin than paracetamol.
Misuse of drugs can be knowingly and unknowlingly, and this is where drug misuse acts are important to control drug related fatalities.
The act is aimed at controlled drugs as specified in schedule 2 of the act. The categorization of the act is divided into three, A,B, and C, and the categorization is based on their respective rate of harm. Aspirin should not be a controlled drug, but sales should be monitored effectively to avoid excesses.
Human medicine regulations are the modern key, which appears to modernize or overhaul medicine acts. The human medicine regulations came into effect in 2012 and have since comprised of manufacturing to sales of medicines. It replaces medicines acts of 1968 and changed POM of 1997. The regulations effectively help monitor aspirin users to enable safe use.
To effectively use aspirin, mental health act and mental capacity act must largely be considered because these acts help protect adults that lact the capacity to decide what is good for them or not.
Aspirin should not be freely sold to mentally challenged or people with low mental capacity because they lack the ability to define what they need or don’t need. Over the counter, sellers of aspirin should ask the needed questions before a sale is made to draw closer to terms of the acts.
Those selling aspirin should embrace the professional guidance as produced by royal Pharmaceutical Society and Royal Collegae of Nursing. The embrace or adherence leads to safe administration or issuance of medicines by healthcare professionals. By so doing; excessive or illegal usage of aspirin is controlled or limited.
