Aspirin 阿斯匹靈 is not an OTC drug in Taiwan

2025 03 28 Owen Yang

Unlike most other countries, aspirin is not an OTC drug in Taiwan and has never been a major drug for non-cardiac use. This makes it interesting to look at prescribing of Aspirin (or Acetylsalicylic acid #B01AC06) in Taiwan because aspirin use would probably be almost all captured in the Taiwan Health Databases. The practice in Taiwan largely follows the guidelines released by the US (ACC/AHA), and so there could be some discretionary use for primary prevention in middle age. It is not possible to know how much it is by simply looking at the analysis here.
Note that there is another ATC drug category in Prescribing in Taiwan for Aspirin in combination with anti-platelets (#B01AC30) but comparably they are very rarely prescribed.