Doctors once again warn consumers about the dangers of paracetamol overdose. Even a slight excess of the daily dose for a certain period of time can lead to an overdose, which in turn is fraught with the most serious consequences.

A dangerous dose can consist of only a few tablets, consumed regularly for several days, weeks or months in a row - depending on the characteristics of the human body. A team of researchers from the University of Edinburgh proves this fact, according to which over the past 16 years, university workers have been registered 161 cases of "step-by-step" overdose of paracetamol, which in a significant number of cases led to the death of patients.

The thing is that people who use paracetamol as an anesthetic on a regular basis, as a rule, can not recognize the symptoms of an overdose, or serious damage to the liver as a result of using this drug. The danger of this phenomenon is also the fact that not every doctor can establish the fact of overdose, since a standard blood test will not help to identify the problem, even if on that day the patient previously drank a whole pack of medicines. Patients affected by turn-based overdose tend to face more serious health problems than patients who at one time used a critical dose of paracetamol.

Even if, in the case of regular use of the drug, the patient did not have acute health problems, this does not mean that its use was without consequences - the researchers add.

As a rule, a significant percentage of patients suffering from chronic pain exceeds the permissible dose of consumption to the extent that at some point the body adapts to the medicine and the pain is no longer dull. As a result, patients try to correct this by increasing the intake dose. Scientists note that for today it is known for certain reasons that paracetamol suppresses pain. This is achieved by the action of a specific protein - TRPA1 on the cells of the nervous system. Currently, researchers, using this knowledge, are trying to create alternative types of painkillers that will be less toxic.

News. Gradusnik. En.