April 4, 2001. Long will present the study during a 7-10 p.m. PDT Weds. April 4 poster session in the San Diego Convention Center's Sails Pavilion. Chemist Greg T. Long, a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Utah, was scheduled to outline the new method April 4 during the American Chemical Society's national meeting in San Diego. Like other organic substances, aspirin decomposes with time.
Heat accelerates the drug's breakdown.
It can be a two-year experiment to determine decomposition. Such tests have showed 5 percent of aspirin decomposes in about two years. Wight said if a drug company was developing a new medicine that had five possible chemical formulations of equal or similar effectiveness, the test could quickly determine which formulations were most stable and thus would have longer shelf lives. Then the more conventional shelf-life measurements could be done on those formulations. Wight said chemists have known for a long time that a drug's shelf life can be estimated by using heat to accelerate its decomposition.