Liver necrosis from paracetamol
Abstract
Paracetamol was originally used therapeutically in the latter nineteenth century but did not receive much attention until after the 1940s when it was found to be a metabolite of phenacetin (Smith, 1958).It was given the approved name "Paracetamol " by the British Pharmacopoeia Commission in February, 1957, and was introduced into the 1963 edition of the British Pharmacopoeia.It has been considered as a possible sub- stitute for phenacetin (e.g., Comely & Ritter, 1956) following reports of interstitial nephritis allegedly due to phenacetin (e.g., Editorial, 1965).We decided to study the toxicity of paracetamol following previous work in this laboratory on the acute oral toxicity of phenacetin (Boyd, 1959 and 1960).The most interesting finding was that when death was delayed there was an associated necrosis of the liver.The initial objective was to compare the acute toxicity of paracetamol with that of phenacetin.Therefore the project was designed so that toxicity would be determined at the range of the LD50 given to albino rats by intragastric cannula.The oral LD50 of paracetamol has been reported somewhat lower than that of phenacetin in mice and higher in rats (Smith, 1958).In rats it has been found of the order of 3.0 to 4.5 g/kg (Renault, Rohrbach & Dugniolle, 1956; Smith, 1958). METHODSThe experiments were performed upon young male CBL-Wistar albino rats of 100 to 200 g body weight fed Purina laboratory chow and water ad libitum.Sixteen hours before paracetamol admini-…
Read the paper
Related studies
- Effect of dexamethasone as an analgesic adjuvant to multimodal pain treatment after total knee arthroplasty: randomised clinical trial
- Effect of a Postoperative Multimodal Opioid-Sparing Protocol vs Standard Opioid Prescribing on Postoperative Opioid Consumption After Knee or Shoulder Arthroscopy: A Randomized Clinical Trial
- Comparison of the Post-Caesarean Analgesic Effect of Adding Dexmedetomidine to Paracetamol and Ketorolac: A Randomized Clinical Trial
- A triple-blind randomized clinical trial of different associations between dexamethasone and non-steroids anti-inflammatories for preemptive action in third molar extractions
- An open label randomized clinical trial of Indomethacin for mild and moderate hospitalised Covid-19 patients
- Oral paracetamol and/or ibuprofen for treating pain after soft tissue injuries: Single centre double-blind, randomised controlled clinical trial
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.