Everything was gone: a cholesterol-lowering drug, decongestant, aspirin, cold medicine and Tylenol. At the hospital, eight to 10 hours after her son swallowed all those pills, she learned it was acetaminophen — the key ingredient in Tylenol and lots of cold medicines — that put her son in danger. Doctors later determined he'd ingested 60, milligrams — 20 times the recommended daily limit.
Had she waited longer, her son might have died of liver failure. It might already be too late to avoid a liver transplant, doctors told her. The year-old suburban resident asked that her name not be disclosed to protect her son's identity. She contacted the Times Union to share her story because she was stunned to find Tylenol as the drug he turned to when his despair hit bottom. He was being treated for depression and bipolar disorder, but had no history of drug abuse or signs he was considering suicide, she said.
Her son later told her he learned on the Internet that he could kill himself with Tylenol, she said. The teen is hardly alone in turning to acetaminophen to end his life. Acetaminophen poisoning is the result of taking too much acetaminophen. Acetaminophen poisoning can happen when you take too much in a short time such as if you accidentally take several different medicines or products that have acetaminophen or if you intentionally take an overdose.
Acetaminophen poisoning also can happen slowly if you take a high dose for a long time because you have severe chronic pain. Even regular doses of acetaminophen can be dangerous in certain situations such as if you have liver damage.
Acetaminophen poisoning can seriously damage your liver and can result in liver failure. Acetaminophen poisoning may not cause symptoms until your liver has been damaged. If you're taking care of a child with a cold or cough, be very careful you don't give the child too much acetaminophen. Many different types of medicines in all different forms liquid, pill, chewable have acetaminophen as an ingredient.
If you think you or someone else may have acetaminophen poisoning, call for emergency medical assistance in most areas of the United States right away or call the poison control center for advice in the United States.
The World Health Organization provides a world directory of poison centers. After 3 to 4 days, you may throw up more, develop yellow skin and eyes jaundice , and bleed under the skin, and from the nose or gums. If the poisoning is from taking smaller doses over time, the first symptoms may be of liver failure:. Doctors will do blood tests to check for acetaminophen poisoning.
If you take Tylenol for your cold, and then Midol for your period cramps, you'll pass the recommended dosage. Advil Advil and other ibuprofen-like drugs are NSAIDS — nonsterodial anti-inflammatory drugs which can cause death and serious gastrointestinal bleeding and ulcers if not taken as directed.
NSAID drugs hospitalize over , people and kill 16, in the US each year due to overdoses, wrongful combinations, or incorrect usage not taking pills with a little food or milk, etc.
The most important thing to keep in mind is to carefully manage your pain in the safest way possible. If you find that yoga or a hot soak relieves you headache, do that instead of popping pills. Epsom salts Perfect for a soothing baths, epsom salts are also used as a natural laxative because they contain magnesium sulfate. But instead of getting better, Davy became listless. On Christmas Day, he threw up blood.
His father took him to a local emergency room wrapped in a fuzzy brown blanket. A few days later, the boy was declared brain dead. At trial, they testified they never gave Davy more than the recommended dose, 4 grams per day, or eight tablespoons. An expert for the company testified that lab work suggested the boy had ingested more, 6 to 10 grams, over several days.
The difference amounted to as little as 4 tablespoons a day, but the company prevailed, persuading the jury that the Baumles had not used Tylenol precisely as specified. David Baumle said he would never have given his son the drug if he knew it was potentially lethal. Tylenol was born in , when the family-owned McNeil Laboratories introduced a liquid for children called Tylenol Elixir.
McNeil named the product based on letters in the chemical term for acetaminophen, N-ace tyl -p-aminoph enol. Unlike companies that develop prescription drugs, McNeil has no patent on acetaminophen, and so no right to sell it exclusively.
Virtually every drug store stocks generic acetaminophen, usually on the same shelf as Tylenol. To sell Tylenol at a premium, the company had to persuade customers they were getting extra value. The company aimed its early sales pitches at doctors , according to a company history , working to persuade them to recommend Tylenol as a safer alternative to aspirin. But in what later became a business school case study , McNeil removed Tylenol from the market, offered refunds and eventually developed tamper-resistant pills.
By the end, it had transformed a disaster into a public relations coup. Hospitals do. In , marketing was the largest department in the company, employing about professionals, McEvoy said in a court deposition. Instead, the company is part of the consumer division, along with shampoo, mouthwash and skin care products.
Although the drug is available in cheaper generic forms, McNeil accounted for nearly half of all over-the-counter sales of acetaminophen, according to a McNeil presentation. Sales of acetaminophen by all companies have also grown.
In , more than 27 billion doses of acetaminophen were sold in the U. Between and , the company notified the FDA of plans to introduce 54 different kinds of packages, ranging from chewable tablets to coated pills, packed into bottles, pouches, cartons and blister packs. The first reports of deaths from acetaminophen emerged in the late s. Researchers subsequently learned that when the drug is broken down in the liver, it produces a potentially toxic byproduct.
In an overdose, the liver can no longer safely dispose of the byproduct and can fail in a matter of days, shriveling like a deflated balloon. The concerns with acetaminophen emerged at a time when the American system for drug oversight was undergoing a sea change. Congress had passed a law in requiring the FDA to institute more rigorous testing for new drugs and to review the safety and efficacy of those already on the market. In , as part of the review of existing drugs, the FDA assembled a group of doctors and scientists to assess painkillers, including acetaminophen.
Over five years, the panel held 50 meetings, heard from scores of witnesses, and scoured thousands of pages of research — much of it submitted by drug makers themselves. Relatively few cases of acetaminophen poisoning had been documented in the United States.
But an American study published in identified four acetaminophen-related deaths in one year in one city, Denver. The company then gave him funding to help develop the acetaminophen antidote. Committee members wanted to drive home the potentially devastating consequences of taking too much acetaminophen, said Ninfa Redmond, a toxicologist who served on the panel. For McNeil, the proposed liver warning put a lot at stake. Just the year before, Tylenol had become the No.
Almost a decade would pass without the FDA coming to any decision. While the label advised consumers to seek medical assistance if they overdosed, McNeil was able to sell its drug without warning that it could harm the liver.
Redmond called such additional review unnecessary because the basic facts about the drug were well-established. The agency agreed a warning was necessary but said there was no need to specify that the drug could injure the liver. As early as the s, an FDA panel had examined whether to put an alcohol warning on the acetaminophen label. According to a corporate memo from February , McNeil had test-marketed how consumers would interpret different versions of an alcohol warning.
No matter how the warning was phrased, consumers reacted negatively: Most respondents concluded that drinkers should reduce or discontinue using Tylenol, even at recommended levels. A senior McNeil official would later testify in a deposition that the issue was controversial and complex. Then, in August , a relatively obscure Swedish journal published a study on the dangers of drinking and taking acetaminophen.
In just over half the cases, users substantially exceeded dosing limits. However, there were 18 instances in which they took less than 6 grams a day, not much more than the 4 grams considered safe, Gates noted. Although McNeil had been preparing for the possibility that the FDA would require an alcohol warning, it took years before the agency publicly grappled with the issue.
In , the FDA convened an advisory panel to look at the risk of mixing alcohol and acetaminophen. Such panels are made up of outside experts. While the FDA does not have to follow their recommendations, it usually does. McNeil argued against the warning , saying the scientific evidence did not justify it and that it would frighten customers into taking other pain relievers that the company claimed were riskier.
But the panel found that an alcohol warning was warranted. Because it was a post drug, the agency could push for a warning with less red tape. It moved to do so on the new product, raising the possibility that regular Tylenol would have no alcohol warning but that the time-release product would have one.
After the FDA approved extended release Tylenol with an alcohol alert in , McNeil voluntarily added the warning to all Tylenol products. Four years after McNeil acted, the FDA required all acetaminophen manufacturers to add an alcohol alert to their products.
People who drank three or more alcoholic drinks every day were advised to consult their doctors and were warned that liver damage could occur. Benedi, who worked as a special assistant to President George H. Bush, often drank two or three glasses of wine with dinner. On a Friday in February , just weeks after Bush left office, Benedi came down with the flu. Over the next several days, he said, he took Tylenol, never exceeding the maximum dose. Benedi said he was careful to read labels.
At the time, nothing on his box of Extra Strength Tylenol warned about the risk of drinking or liver damage. Several nights later, he woke up, confused and incoherent. His wife called an ambulance to rush him to a hospital near their home in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.
By the time he arrived, Benedi had slipped into a coma. Tests showed his liver enzyme levels were high, a sign of organ damage. He had brain swelling, so doctors drilled a hole in his skull to relieve the pressure. After his third day in a coma, Benedi got a second chance at life. Benedi spent two months in the hospital, more than surgical staples holding his abdomen together in a raw wound that looked like the Mercedes-Benz symbol. Almost two decades later, he still suffers from those few days of taking Tylenol.
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