PARACETAMOL POISONINGS SURGE IN SWITZERLAND

Paracetamol is a popular painkiller but higher use of the drug can lead to poisoning, as the Swiss have found out in the past 17 years, starting in October 2003, when the medicine became available in 1,000 milligram (1 gram) tablets, which is double the dose of the regular 500 milligram tablets that can be purchased over the counter, ScienceDaily reported.

Paracetamol is the most widely used painkiller in the world. "It is a very safe drug, but only for short-term pain relief and as long as the daily dosage does not go above the recommended range," says Andrea Burden, Professor of Pharmacoepidemiology at Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich, a research university. Burden and her team analyzed sales figures from the Swiss pharmacists' association Pharmasuisse and data from the Tox Info Suisse poison control centre on poisoning cases for the period before and after the higher-dose tablets were launched.

From the sales data, the scientists observed that the 1,000 milligram tablets had rapidly grown in popularity since their introduction. In 2005, the 1,000 milligram tablets outsold the 500 milligram tablets for the first time. Currently, sales of the 1,000 milligram tablets are ten times those of the 500 milligram ones. During the same period, the number of paracetamol poisoning cases reported to Tox Info Suisse had increased. After 2005, there was marked 40 percent increase in poisoning cases within three years, going from 561 cases in 2005 to 786 in 2008.

"On that basis, we can conclude that the increased number of poisoning cases is associated with the availability of the 1,000 milligram tablets," says Stefan Weiler, co-author of the study and scientific director of Tox Info Suisse. In the following years, the number of poisoning cases continued to increase, to 1188 in 2018., but also in double the dose, in 1,000 milligram (1 gram) tablets when prescribed by a physician. Researchers at ETH Zurich have now investigated whether the availability of the higher-dose tablets could be linked to the increased incidence of paracetamol poisoning, concluding that it is.