III.

How Aspirin Works

Aspirin is thought to act by interfering with synthesis of prostaglandins, hormonelike chemicals in the body that have many functions. Prostaglandins are implicated in inflammation and fever. They also can induce pain and raise the sensitivity to pain, and they are responsible for making platelets stick together to form blood clots. British pharmacologist Sir John Vane, along with the Swedish researchers Sune Bergström and Bengt Samuelsson, shared the 1982 Nobel Prize in medicine for showing how aspirin works by blocking a particular enzyme needed to produce prostaglandins.