Analgesics

Analgesics and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are used to reduce pain and eliminate inflammation. The path to the discovery of anesthetics was difficult and long. In the past, only folk remedies had been used for these purposes, and during the surgery the role of anesthetics was played by alcohol, opium, scopolamine, Indian hemp, and even such inhumane methods as stunning blow to the head or partial asphyxiation. In folk medicine to relieve pain and fever willow bark had long been used. Later it had been discovered that the active ingredient in willow bark was salicin, which is converted by hydrolysis into salicylic acid. Acetylsalicylic acid was synthesized as early as 1853, but it had not been used in medicine until 1899, until people found out about its effectiveness for arthritis and good endurance. Only after that the first drug of acetylsalicylic acid was introduced, which is now known worldwide as Aspirin. Since then, the number of synthesized compounds of different chemical nature, which suppress pain not causing the loss of consciousness, were discovered. These means are called analgesics (from the Greek algos – pain). Those that do not cause addiction, and in therapeutic doses do not inhibit the activity of the brain, are called non-narcotic analgesics. Since most of them additionaly have anti-inflammatory properties, they are called “Non-narcotic analgesics and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.”

These substances are able to suppress the symptoms and signs of inflammation, including pain, because the reduction of the intensity of the inflammatory process leads to a decrease of pain. Furthermore, they reduce high body temperature, which means they have antipyretic effect, which is being exerted due to the thickening of skin vessels’ surface and strengthening of the heat emission.

The group of non-narcotic analgesics and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are the drugs with different chemical structures and with different ratios of analgesic and anti-inflammatory effect. The mechanism of anti-inflammatory and analgesic action of NSAIDs is associated with inhibition of the enzyme specific – COX, contributing to the synthesis of prostaglandins – the major mediators of inflammation and pain. At the same time, they affect the synthesis and the transformation of other substances within the body (e.g. bradykinin) involved in the occurrence and distribution of inflammation and pain.