Acetaminophen boosts blood pressure
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The Food and drug Administration announced a new rule that requires drug makers to use no more than 325 milligrams of acetaminophen or Paracetamol in prescription painkillers.
The rule came after an FDA advisory committee suggested the agency should ban acetaminophen because prescription drugs with this painkilling ingredient have been linked hundreds of deaths and thousands of hospitalizations each year in the United States. One problem is acute liver failure duet to drug overdose.
A recent study published in 2010 in Circulation suggests that taking acetaminophen may also boost risk of heart disease.
The study led by Isabella Sudano M.D. of University Hospital Zurich in Zurich, Switzerland and colleagues showed using even therapeutic doses of acetaminophen increased both systolic and diastolic blood pressure in patients with coronary artery disease.
High blood pressure has been linked to increased risk of cardiovascular disease.
For the study, the researchers gave 33 patients with coronary artery disease acetaminophen in addition to standard cardiovascular therapy for two weeks.
At baseline and the end of the study, they measured ambulatory blood pressure, heart rate, endothelium-dependent and independent vasodilation, platelet function, endothelial progenitor cells, renin-angiotensin system markers and oxidative stress.
Treatment with acetaminophen increased mean systolic and diastolic ambutory blood pressure to 125.3 and 75.4 mmHg from 122.4 and 73.2 mm Hg respectively, the researchers found.
Acetaminophen treatment did not change heart rate, endothelial function, early endothelial progenitor cells, and platelet function.
Sudano et al. wrote "acetaminophen induces a significant increase in ambulatory blood pressure in patients with coronary artery disease. Thus, the use of acetaminophen should be evaluated as rigorously as traditional nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs and cyclooxygenase-2 inhibitors, particularly in patients at increased cardiovascular risk."
David Liu
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