Wednesday, October 7, 2009

New Warnings for Tylenol (acetaminophen) Toxicity

This summer, an FDA advisory panel made several recommendations to reduce the available doses of Tylenol in both adult and children’s medications because of known liver toxicity. There are 640 cases of liver failure a year due to Tylenol, as well as many more cases of toxicity due to overdoses. 54,743 visits to the ER in 2006 were acetaminophen-related. The panel decided not to remove Tylenol from all over-the-counter products by a narrow 24-13 vote. Tylenol has been thought to be safer than other pain relieving products available in pharmacies, but now it should be clear that natural products such as glucosamine, boswelia, MSM from Health Food Stores are better choices.

See Family Practice News(subscription required, click here) August, 2009, p. 49.

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