OTC Painkillers Need More Scrutiny

by Erika Furlong

I recently attended the June 29th-30th FDA advisory committee meeting that voted for a reduction in the maximum daily over-the-counter (OTC) dose of acetaminophen and the âunbundlingâ of narcotic-acetaminophen prescription medications. While I agree ultimately with many of the recommendations that were made, I canât help but feel that there is a larger problem that remains unaddressed. There is a growing disparity between FDA expectations for prescription drugs and expectations for OTC drugs and dietary supplements. As requirements for prescription drugs increasingly reflect the ability of the pharmaceutical industry to design and manufacture safer drugs, requirements for OTC drugs appear stagnant, and dietary supplements continue to be deemed safe until proven otherwise.

Most OTC painkillers were first made available at a time when modern drug development technologies and safety assessment techniques did not exist â and even though these technologies and techniques are now available, FDA hasnât required OTC drug manufacturers to apply them to their products. The popularity of these drugs over the years has illustrated that the public considers them to be of great utility in offering readily available treatment for pain conditions. Yet, these drugs account for a huge proportion of the adverse events that are seen with all pharmaceutical agents, due in part to their widespread use. By all accounts (clinical trials, retrospective studies and medical surveillance systems) these compounds have âimportantâ health risks associated with their use, most notably to the liver, kidney and gastrointestinal tract. Not surprisingly, these adverse events constitute a substantial (and potentially avoidable) public safety issue with important implications in terms of health care costs.

This begs the question: do these drugs still reflect current safety and efficacy standards? And, shouldnât they? 

Technology to improve on the safety profiles of these medications exists, but manufacturers have few incentives to use it. Many of these drugs might not meet current FDA requirements for new drug formulations, so one might argue that industry has in fact been conditioned to rely on inaction and bank on the fact that the tradition of using these outdated medications is enough to surmount what would be considered for any other group of non-lifesaving medications an unfavorable safety profile.

For example, letâs consider acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol and other painkillers. It is a derivative of coal tar, which first became available in the 1950s when its parent compound, phenacetin (also an analgesic/antipyretic), was determined to have substantial side effects. FDA staff member Dr. John Senior reminded members of the FDAâs 2002 Nonprescription Drug Advisory Committee of the drugâs history:

Recall that this drug, acetaminophen, was approved before there was even a requirement to show efficacy, so that there were never any really [proper]  dose ranging studies done for safety purposes. And the methods and techniques available in 1950 were very limited.

Since the 1950s, researchers have determined that when the body breaks down acetaminophen it produces a reactive metabolite. It is this metabolite that then causes liver toxicity â and the higher the dose, the greater toxicity. In technical terms, acetaminophen is a dose-dependent hepatotoxin. FDA has said that dose-dependent hepatotoxins present too great a risk of hepatotoxicity and are now generally âdiscovered and rejected during preclinical testing.â But more importantly, there now exist ways to design drugs around the development of a reactive metabolite. This is achieved by screening multiple and often times thousands of related compounds to find the ones that cause the fewest adverse effects and that are least likely to result in the formation of reactive metabolites. In fact, as early as the mid-1980s a scientist proposed that by just slightly modifying the chemical structure of acetaminophen the analgesic properties could be retained but the metabolite would never be formed. So why has this not been done? 

Part of the problem may be that not only is the FDA setting a low bar for OTC drug manufacturers, but industry may consider current efficacy and safety standards too prohibitive to tempt the development of improved formulations, which would now require extensive safety and efficacy testing (never before done on many of these compounds). An estimated 42,000 people are hospitalized each year due to acetaminophen, of which four to five hundred die. Thousands of people are also afflicted with potentially life threatening gastrointestinal bleeds because of NSAIDs (another type of pain drug, which includes aspirin, ibuprofen, and naproxen sodium). But with billions of dollars in sales, it is not too hard to imagine why this industry might not want to mess with a good thing, despite the casualties left in its wake. 

Clearly something should be done here. With baby boomers feeling the aches and pains of older age, the need for OTC pain relievers is great. But the ease of their OTC status should not be an obstacle to the development of safer, more effective alternatives. Acetaminophen was first developed and recognized as safe at a time when cars didnât have seatbelts and there were ashtrays in the Surgeon Generalâs office. Since that time, drug design has improved by leaps and bounds and safety expectations have risen accordingly. So too should improvements and technological innovations be applied to the development of safer OTC pain relievers. Instead of trying to patch the problem with stricter warnings and inadequately funded educational campaigns, regulators should consider a combination of penalties and incentives to drive safety improvements to OTC pain relievers.

Erika Furlong is a scientific analyst for a Manhattan-based law firm. She has worked on litigations involving both NSAIDs and acetaminophen.

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I have just been rambling so skip this if you get bored. I am one of the crazy Nam vets that lives in the third world, because frankly with my pensions here I am rich, in the states I would be one disability check from the street and I would have to use the Veterans Administration hospital and they have tried to kill me at least 4 to 5 times. What is so hard to understand about I AM allergic to penicillin? I had a bad flashback yesterday and it is riding me. Sorry if I wasted your time reading this.

I have an incredible number of allergies. The OTC mentioned above are all in there. When I was in the states the last time, I almost died in the hospital after an emergency appendectomy because they refused to bring me the inhalers that I knew I would need in an american hospital. The nurse refused to call a doctor when I was dying of suffocation from the enormous number of chemicals that are in every american hospital. That the hospital would be condemned as totally contaminated in an office building.

I checked out of the hospital 45 minutes after I came out of the operating anesthetic. The doctor prescribed and refused to change the pain med that I knew was mixed with acetaminophen. I had to have the pain med. I caught the first flight out of AZ to FL. By FL, I was shitting blood. I literally tore up a magazine and shoved part up my ass to keep from having to go to the men's room. Incredible pain from the operation and my stomach still kept bleeding. Believe it or not I could feel bleeding in my stomach.

The flight from hell.

When I got home, my wife, herself a nurse, a friend, herself a fully qualified doctor and my main interpreter's sister met the plane. Within 45 minutes I was in the best hospital in the capital having blood drawn just before I went into the CT then into the MRI, then a stool sample, which I had to explain to them about shoving a magazine up my ass. Then Xrays.
Every thing checked by the ranking doctors in the best medical school in the country. THEY listened to my wife when she described my allergies and brought in the leading allergy physician in the capital. They consulted and decided that the americans had done a good job, not the way they would have done but that the blood samples and scan, etc showed they got all of the appendix. Then a long consultation over what to give me to stop the bleeding. Something I had never heard of but I knew it had to be stopped. I took it. Two hours another stool sample. Another dose, another stool sample (actually just the mucus oozing out of my ass). No blood. Everyone was congratulating everyone on stopping a problem that they solved because they, unlike the american doctor listened to me.

I was carrying $5000 american and 5800 euros. My wife was passing out stacks of twenty dollar bills like candy, I was tipping the nurses, the techs, the support staff everyone with $100. Finally they started refusing more money. They were so proud of themselves that an american would actually go through what I went through to get to doctors that listened, to get into a hospital that was not totally contaminated.

They got out of bed at 2 AM and spent 8 hours working on one old crazy Nam vet american that had a condition that would have killed him, but they listened to me and my wife.

I cannot even imagine going back to the US.

I can't eat your damn food because it is ALL saturated with chemicals. Pouring tons of pesticide and herbicide on land for 80 years does not provide "organic" food if you don't use chemicals the next year. The only way to provide "organic" is to use soil that has never been farmed before.

According to the washington state occupational health board I was one of four people in the whole us that was allergic to WD40, in 1994.

OTC meds must be checked.

I had a VA doctor who tried to prescribe for me penicillin when the first allergy listed on my arm band was that. Then she prescribed aspirin for the pain. I'm screaming why the hell did I fill out these allergies when you can't or won't read them. I told her to skip it, that I would go down and swap meds with the guys waiting in the pharmacy and I did. It had apparently not occurred to most of the guys that knew what kept the horrors away at night that someone else might need something that they were getting and that didn't work for them. By the time I left it was swap drugs time, blatantly and openly, worse than needle park in Los Angeles.

I live in the third world. My food is in the ground one day, in the market in the morning and in me by lunch time. The farmers are so poor that they can't afford chemicals. The vegetable sellers sell imported food from second world countries and I can't eat it because it is saturated in chemicals.

The first world and the second world are poisoning the children. I never heard of Attention Deficit Disorder or autistic children before 1980. It's the damned chemicals, he says as he takes another 10 mg of amitriptyline.

By evil is evil (not verified) on 25 Jul 2009 #permalink