United States: New British research suggests that those considering taking good medication should also ensure they do not overindulge in it.
When the participants took more doses of paracetamol, referred to as acetaminophen within the United States and popularly known as Tylenol, they were hit with the increased risk of developing gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, and kidney complications if they were over 65 years old.
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The study, reported in the Arthritis Care and Research in recent weeks, shows how senior citizens risk causing more harm than good to themselves through consuming larger doses of the drug for chronic painful conditions such as osteoarthritis.
Typically, acetaminophen is used for short-term and mild to moderate disease-associated pain or fever.
This nutrient is normally added to cold and flu-sustaining foods, and it is administered alone.
It operates by preventing signals to the brain that inform people when they feel some pain and by messing up some of the chemicals that regulate their body temperature.
It also implies that the common painkiller stops the formation of prostaglandins that are created by the body to combat disease and injury.
What more are the experts stating?
The study was led by Weiya Zhang of the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre in the School of Medicine at the University of Nottingham.
He said, “Due to its perceived safety, paracetamol [acetaminophen] has long been recommended as the first-line drug treatment for osteoarthritis by many treatment guidelines, especially in older people who are at higher risk of drug-related complications,” US News reported.
In the case of the study, the researchers reviewed information about 180,400 senior citizens aged 65 and above under a repeated acetaminophen user, that is, who had been prescribed the drug at least twice within six months.
This was then compared to close to 402,500 similarly aged people who had never been on repeat prescriptions of the drug.
The results indicated that prolonged use of acetaminophen significantly increases the likelihood of gastrointestinal bleeding by 36 percent, peptic ulcer formation by 20 percent, heart failure by 9 percent, hypertension by 7%, and chronic kidney disease by 19 percent.