Many people believe that prescription medications are one of the main causes of liver failure. After all, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), drug-induced liver injury (or hepatotoxicity) is the second most common reason drugs are withdrawn from the market.
Dr. Lo Re
Infectious disease specialist, Vincent Lo Re, MD, MSCE, and director of the Living Liver Donor Transplant program, set out to uncover the prevalence and outcomes of drug-induced acute liver failure in the United States.
Through their study, they determined that prescription drug-induced liver failure is pretty rare. It’s actually over-the-counter medications and dietary or herbal supplements that most commonly lead to liver failure.
The study
To discover the true cause of acute liver failure, the hepatologists and their team analyzed data from an integrated healthcare system, representative of the broader U.S. population. The data they looked at was from Kaiser Permanente Northern California between January 1, 2004 and December 31, 2010.
Among the 5,484,224 patients evaluated, 62 were identified with acute liver failure, nearly half of which were drug-induced. Acetaminophen was associated with 56 percent of cases, dietary and herbal supplements with 19 percent, antibiotics with six percent and miscellaneous medications with 18 percent.
What this means
According to Dr. Lo Re, these findings give reason to consider additional regulatory oversight of dietary supplements and herbal products. In particular, acetaminophen (when unintentionally overdosed) often causes acute liver failure.
“These data are reassuring in that they demonstrate that the risk of liver failure, the most dreaded complication from medication-induced liver failure, is a rare event. However, people should still be vigilant about the potential risks of medications and/or supplements, especially for those over-the-counter products that have limited to no proven efficacy.”
If you’ve had liver failure, you know how challenging it can be. Share with your family and friends that they need to be careful about over-the-counter medications and supplements – and amounts –that they choose to take. Make sure to take medications as indicated.