When ibuprofen was placed on drugstore shelves in May, 1984, it was the first new over-the-counter (OTC) pain-relief medication to enter the marketplace in a generation. Prior to its introduction, nonprescription pain relief was mainly provided by acetaminophen (introduced in 1955) and aspirin (marketed since 1899).

Ibuprofen was developed by the Boots Company, a British drug manufacturer and retailer. Early in the 1960s, researchers at Boots identified carboxylic acid as the agent that gave aspirin its anti-inflammatory property. The Boots group investigated other carboxylic acids; when they found one that was twice as strong as aspirin, they synthesized and tested more than 600 compounds from these acids. The most effective and useful of these was ibuprofen, which Boots began to sell in 1964 in the United Kingdom as the prescription medication Brufen. (Ibuprofen became available OCT in the U.K. in 1983.) Ibuprofen appeared in American pharmacies in 1974 when Boots granted a nonexclusive license...