You may have heard about the FDA’s crackdown on the overuse of acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol and many over the counter pain killers on ABC World News last week. Here are some very interesting additions to that story.
Bloomberg News (1/14, Larkin) reports, “Prescription pain pills may contain no more than 325 milligrams of acetaminophen as of Jan. 14, 2014, the Food and Drug Administration said.” The medicines “also will carry a boxed warning on liver risks.” The FDA said the “most common acetaminophen dose for prescription and over-the-counter drugs is 500 milligrams.”The AP (1/14, Perronne) reports that FDA officials said “the labeling on prescription drugs often does not make it clear that they contain acetaminophen, instead using abbreviations for the ingredient like ‘APAP.'”
The New York Times (1/14, Harris) reports Federal drug regulators “have tried for decades to cut down on acetaminophen’s toll, but little changed until June 2009, when the FDA’s panel of experts voted by a bare majority to call for a ban on drugs that combine acetaminophen with narcotics.”
Liver failure is a serious risk from an overdose of acetaminophen. The Washington Post (1/14, Stein) reports the FDA’s Sandra Kweder said, “The FDA is taking this action to make prescription combination pain medications containing acetaminophen safer for patients to use. … Overdose from prescription combination products containing acetaminophen account for nearly half of all cases of acetaminophen-related liver failure in the United States, many of which result in liver transplant or death.
At Lundy Law, we urge you to follow guidelines when taking painkillers that contain acetaminophen.
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