A study, paid for by Purdue Pharma and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that the maximum recommended daily dose of acetaminophen caused an increase in liver enzymes in healthy adults.
The study at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill found that a recommended dose of the pain reliever best known as Tylenol may be dangerous to a patient's liver. "Several of the subjects actually had (liver enzyme) elevations to the point that any physician would become very alarmed and want to know why," says lead author Paul Watkins of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Still, Watkins emphasized, "I don't think it means that acetaminophen is dangerous as it's being consumed."
He goes on to say: "I think this study reminds us of what we already know: that you should stop at the 4-gram dose and not take more than you need." Tylenol had previously been found to harm the liver in overdose cases, but the study released was the first to raises suspicions on the recommended dose for healthy adults. |
