If acetaminophen is the problem, why don’t they just ban that? Or, maybe before they do this how about they make every effort to educate the public?
A federal advisory panel voted narrowly on Tuesday to recommend a ban on Percocet and Vicodin, two of the most popular prescription painkillers in the world, because of their effects on the liver.
The two drugs combine a narcotic with acetaminophen, the ingredient found in popular over-the-counter products like Tylenol and Excedrin. High doses of acetaminophen are a leading cause of liver damage, and the panel noted that patients who take Percocet and Vicodin for long periods often need higher and higher doses to achieve the same effect.
[...]
While the medicine is effective in treating headaches and reducing fevers, even recommended doses can cause liver damage in some people. And more than 400 people die and 42,000 are hospitalized every year in the United States from overdoses.
In hopes of reducing some of these accidents, the committee voted 24 to 13 to recommend that the F.D.A. reduce the highest allowed dose of acetaminophen in over-the-counter pills like Tylenol to 325 milligrams, from 500. And members voted 21 to 16 to reduce the maximum daily dosage to less than 4,000 milligrams.
Won’t people just take more pills?
Acetaminophen is included in a vast array of over-the-counter cough and cold products, including Nyquil, Excedrin and many others. A small share of accidental poisonings result when people take two or more of these combination products without understanding the risk.
The F.D.A. asked the committee whether it should ban combination products that include acetaminophen. The vote was 24 to 13 against such a ban, with many members saying consumers saw the products as valuable.
So….they’ll ban the perfectly legal, but only available by prescription combo drugs, but not anything that can be bought over-the-counter. This makes No Sense At All.
Consumers need to be better educated about the risks of popular medicines, most panel members agreed.
“If you keep track of what you’re taking, none of this is an issue for you,” Dr. Jan Engle, a panel member and head of the Department of Pharmacy Practice at the University of Illinois in Chicago, said in an interview after the meeting.
Duh.
June 30, 2009 at 8:08 pm
First with Bush II, now with Obama, the government increasingly works ass-backwards, doesn’t it? I suspect that’s a feature, not a bug. Wonder who was on the committee. OTC drugs are a great revenue source. Prescription drugs with a generic equivalent that insurance companies may mandate may not be so financially valuable.
I’m one of those people acetaminophen just isn’t effective for. I was prescribed Vicoden for days when my joint pain is exceptionally bad. The narcotic helped with muscle cramps, but the combo did nothing for pain, and I’d often end up also taking ibuprofen. Finally I asked my doctor to just give me a drug with ibuprofen, since I didn’t need the double risk of liver damage. I take it as seldom as possible, but at least when I do, it works.
July 1, 2009 at 5:21 am
sister of ye – Acetaminophen doesn’t work with me either. When I’ve taken vicoden, it’s the narcotic that helps me, not the pain killer. As in, the narcotic pretty much makes me too drowsy to care. I don’t knowingly take acetaminophen for headaches, pain or flu symptoms for that reason. When they started announcing several years ago the issue with acetaminophen and liver problems I thought, “Second reason not to have this stuff in my house.” I also avoid aspirin because of its connection with fever and Reyes Syndrome. So it’s ibuprofen for me. After reading that article though, I see they ’sneak’ acetaminophen into an awful lot of OTC as well.
Your thought on the profitablity of OTC medications vs presciption generics is exactly what I was thinking as well. It’s okay for us to poison ourselves us with high priced OTC, just not low cost prescriptions? At least when I pick up a prescription, my pharmacist goes over the possible side-effects and warnings for my prescription. No one at my corner drug store has ever done that when I’ve picked up Nyquil.
July 3, 2009 at 1:44 pm
Acetaminophen is actually considered a pretty safe drug. It was great in pediatrics because an analgesic and anti-pyretic that was NOT associated with Reye’s syndrome became available.
There may be accidental overdoses and intentional overdoses. You aren’t going to stop the intentional overdoses because people will just find something else to use. The accidental ones largely occur because people are, well, ignorant. Put the appropriate warnings on the label.
Acetaminophen is more dangerous in an overdose attempt than aspirin or ibuprofen, because it doesn’t cause gastric irritation. You can actually swallow enough to do liver damage because you don’t throw up. However, there is a specific anti-dote for acetaminophen toxicity.
Plenty of drugs have the potential side effect of hepatotoxicity, including some widely used anti-seizure medicines and ibuprofen. Taking any medicine is a balance of risk and benefit.