Painkiller Acetaminophen Should Be Safe?

Federal Institute of Drugs is painkiller acetaminophen as safe

17.09.2012

The Federal Institute for Drugs (BfArM) comes after an investigation to the conclusion that the controversial painkiller acetaminophen „safe and effective“ be. In a recently published bulletin, the Institute writes that there are no indications „clinically relevant liver damage at therapeutic doses“.

Painkillers such as aspirin and paracetamol are discussed controversially in the art. Thus, the medicine and drug expert Prof. Dr. Kay Brune from the University of Erlangen recently faced the serious side effects that can occur even at normal doses. Such a drug would in his view „will not be allowed anymore today“. Not even on prescription should the analgesic be marketed, according to Brune.

The Federal Institute for Drugs sees it completely different. In the published bulletin, the authors write that there is no evidence that „relevant liver damage occurs at therapeutic doses“. The Federal Association of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers (BAH) welcomed the decision of the BfArM. The spokesman Elmar Kroth now hopes, „that the last discussion, which has unsettled many patients, now comes to an end“. Every year around 50 million packs containing the active ingredient paracetamol are sold in Germany. It is the most widely used analgesic.

The Poison Information Center, meanwhile, demands a general prescription for painkillers. Every day, overdose poisoning causes many patients to dose themselves for pain. Every year, around 30,000 patients in the UK are admitted to a clinic for paracetamol intoxication. Of the patients treated, about 150 died as a result of overdose. In Germany, according to the Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden, a total of 16 deaths (2010) were caused by a painkiller, four of them by an acute acetaminophen overdose. Critics assume that the number of unreported cases is much higher, since usually no acute but rather long-term consequences are to be expected. (Sb)

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Picture: Andrea Damm