The vast majority of babies are given Tylenol (acetaminophen) within the first six months of life. It is the go to medicine for modern parents whenever discomfort, fever, or headaches strikes even very young children and its use is frequently encouraged by many pediatricians.
Now, a major peer-reviewed study of over 20,000 children suggests that giving this popular medicine even as infrequently as once per year could have a permanent, life-threatening health effect.
Researchers at the University of A Coruna in Spain asked the parents of 10,371 children ages 6-7 and 10,372 adolescents aged 13-14 whether their children had asthma and how often they had been given acetaminophen within the previous year and when they were babies.
The children in the younger age group who had received the medicine only once per year were at 70% greater risk for asthma while those receiving Tylenol once a month or more were shockingly 540% more likely to have asthma.
The study, published in the peer-reviewed European Journal of Public Health, also found that children who had even a single dose of Tylenol before their first birthday had a 60% risk of developing asthma.
In the older age group of 13 and 14 year-olds, asthma was 40 percent more likely if they had taken acetaminophen within the previous 12 months. The young teenagers were 250% more at risk if they took it once a month.
The researchers speculated that Tylenol, called paracetamol in the UK, may reduce a potent antioxidant called glutathione in the lungs and blood, which results in damage to the lung tissue. Glutathione is produced by the body (it is a combination of three amino acids: cysteine, glycine and glutamine) and is referred to as the “mother” of all antioxidants by Dr. Mark Hyman MD.
While Tylenol use is strongly associated with a significant increase in asthma and the effect is greater the more often the drug is taken, no causal link is yet established via randomized-controlled trials. Does this mean the results of this large study should be dismissed and parents should continue favoring use of the popular over the counter medication for fever and pain?
Not so fast. It would certainly be the wise and cautious approach for parents to investigate alternatives to Tylenol while additional follow-up research is performed. Asthma rates have been on the increase for decades at the same time Tylenol use became more widespread.
The potential link cannot and should not be ignored. Examination of 20,000 children establishing such a strong associative risk must be taken seriously and the dismissal of the research by some doctors is irresponsible given the seriousness and life altering outcome of an asthma diagnosis. “All the asthma symptoms analysed increased significantly with paracetamol consumption,” the researchers wrote.
Autoimmune Illness MUCH Higher in Children Who Use Tylenol
The associative link is even stronger when one considers that other autoimmune disease is also more prevalent with Tylenol use making the probability of inverse causation far less likely. Inverse causation would mean that children with asthma are simply more likely to pick up coughs and colds that require painkillers. For example, the Spanish study also concluded that the prevalence of eczema in children increased dramatically the more frequently Tylenol was used. In addition, scientists in New Zealand found in 2010 that Tylenol use before the age of 15 months was associated with a higher risk of children having allergies at the age of six.
Also in 2010, another large study of 11,000 children conducted by the Imperial College of London demonstrated that taking Tylenol in the first six months of life was associated with a higher prevalence of asthma and wheezing. Prior to that in 2009, researchers at the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute in Canada found a higher risk of asthma for both adults and children via a meta-analysis of existing research.
Should savvy and health conscious parents wait awhile until the likely causative relationship is established? Definitely not! With such repetitive and significant associative links firmly established, taking that Children’s Tylenol and chucking it in the trash would be a really constructive action step.
There is absolutely no reason to use this product when raising children anyway. I’ve personally never owned a bottle of Children’s Tylenol let alone used it anytime in the past 15 years since my first child was born. There are plenty of other nontoxic options for dealing with fevers and pain in your young ones!
Another constructive action step? Finding a quality local pasture based farm and having your children drink unpasteurized grassfed milk. The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology reported in August 2011 that children who drank raw milk had a 41% reduced chance of developing asthma. These same children had a nearly 50% reduction in hay fever as well even when other relevant factors were considered.
References
Babies given Calpol just once a month ‘are five times as likely to develop asthma’
The Mother of All Antioxidants
It’s Too Soon to Blame Paracetemol for Rising Childhood Asthma Rates
Exposure to Paracetemol and Asthma Symptoms
The effects of early and late paracetamol exposure on asthma and atopy: a birth cohort Prenatal and infant acetaminophen exposure, antioxidant gene polymorphisms, and childhood asthma
More Information
How to Naturally Relieve a Headache
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You forgot to mention that every single child in this study had a mother with asthma. Isn’t that important information considering the genetic link of many diseases and afflictions? This blog post seems to feed on fear. Several crucial points of the study seemed to have not been included in order to increase that fear. I think this is a great dis-service. Sorry if you take offense, but causing parents to stress and possibly feel guilt for giving their child Tylenol without giving them the full scope of the study seems deceptive.
This blog and its advice doesn’t even rise to the level of “wrong.”
It continues to amaze me that people still use this garbage given all the problems and complications with a person’s health that it creates. I love seeing studies like this performed. I just wish they got more attention; good for you for getting the word out!
Have any US based educational institutions researched this?
ijaai.tums.ac.ir/index.php/ijaai/article/download/420/519‎
Not sure that this is evidence of a strong causation of asthma and acetaminophen.
Here’s the thing. Not all medical publications are equal, both from a standpoint of looking at the journal published in and the article itself. How do I know? Over a decade as a practicing physician. We routinely pull articles from journals like these to present to our residents and medical students and then spend an evening picking them apart, finding the holes in their results and presentations. It’s the difference between a hard hitting piece from Time magazine or being announced on CNN, and something printed in the National Enquirer.
The articles cited here aren’t convincing. The methodology is flawed, there’s zero effort to separate out bias, and there’s no direct link made – a link that isn’t possible using this sort of study. It’s like saying that increased ice cream sales cause a spike in shark bites. Do they track together? Yes – they both happen in summer. Is there a direct link? No.
I would advise caution in using any medication. I would advise even greater caution in the use of unregulated herbs in their place. There is no standardization to know how much of an active ingredient your child is receiving. Google Belladonna toxicity. This isn’t a benign plant. Do your due diligence.
I’d also advice caution that everyone with a ‘Dr.’ title is not a physician. Again, do your due diligence and look them up. Too often we get people with PhD’s in random fields hanging out their shingles and acting as psychologists on the radio, dispensing advice on mental health when they have no training. Likewise on the internet. Pay attention to what their training is, what their doctorate is in, and what they’re selling. Snake oil salesmen aren’t just in the history books.
Me? I’m a physician (M.D.), board certified and in active practice, and hold an associate professorship with a prominent medical school. I’m not an allergist, nor a pediatrician. I have zero entanglement with drug companies, vaccine companies, and I don’t sell anything. I’m employed by a hospital, my salary is static, and I’ve got more work than I can handle as is.
Look, I’m not advocating hitting your kids with Tylenol and Advil every time they say ouch. I’ve got two young boys and they’re constantly getting banged up. We reserve the use of medication for when it’s truly warranted. Not every ear infection needs an antibiotic. Not every fever needs Tylenol. But there’s a reason the mortality rate for kids has dropped like a stone in the last century. There’s a line between being judicious in the use of medications and denying your kids something that will truly help them.
One of my kids, the oldest, has had asthma for the last two years. His mother has it as well (mold and dog allergen triggered). We know his triggers (colds and dog dander) and we know when to be aggressive in treatment for him with inhaled steriods and albuterol treatments. Our other son, who looks like his twin, doesn’t have asthma. Both have received the same immunizations and medications growing up. Is this proof of no link between the tylenol and asthma? Absolutely not.
But in detailed readings of the full articles cited here, there’s only the weakest of suggestion of a link. Investigating it requires real study in a prospective fashion and large numbers of participants. And believe me when I say that a study that proves a link isn’t going to be published in obscure journals. It’ll be major headline news in the medical community.
You’re kidding right? Wow. With all due respect, you’re exactly the type of MD I avoid like the plague. If you said something like this to me and I was sitting in your office, I would get out of my chair and walk out. High IQ, a white coat and a MD degree do not make a smart person.
No I’m not kidding. The articles you cited are weak.
– One looked at the association between acetaminophen and asthma when taken by the mother when pregnant, as related to specific genetic alleles that the mother carried. That study found no association when the drug was given to the infant.
– The New Zealand study was basically a survey that asked if the kids had taken tylenol, how often, and did they have asthma. Many of the confidence intervals they reported overlapped 1.0. Confidence intervals represent the reliability of an estimate. Straddling 1 means it isn’t reliable. This article concerns me in that the don’t discuss how they managed selection bias or controlled for environmental factors, family history, etc.
– The study from the Vancouver group was published in Chest. This journal is a very prominent one, one with strong peer review of articles. This wasn’t a prospective study though, but a meta analysis, where they examined other articles and collated the results. Their results do show a link, but the number of articles they included wasn’t impressive.
Now, let’s talk about strong articles. I spent some time this evening crawling through the databases.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23047989
This article studied the effect of a single dose of acetaminophen on the airways of children. It was a prospective, placebo controlled, double blinded study. It showed that a single dose caused no change in the respiratory system of children. It was done by a respected hospital and published in a respectable journal. My only concern with this study is the low number of participants, that enrolling that few of patients wouldn’t given statistically significant results.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18805332
This is a big study. Thirty plus centers, over two hundred thousand patients. Their methodology is sound, looking at not only the acetaminophen exposure, but environmental factors, etc as well. It was published in Lancet, a British journal that’s been around a century and a half and has a strong reputation. They found a dose-dependent link between acetaminophen and asthma, eczema, and rhinoconjunctivitis.
That same article is then referenced in this review article, published in the journal Pediatrics, another well respected publication and written by a pediatric pulmonologist.
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2011/11/04/peds.2011-1106.full.pdf+html
It, and other articles, are cited here in a compelling evidence of dose dependent association between acetaminophen and asthma.
Here’s another article that is a review of several others with good methodology.
http://publications.chestnet.org/data/Journals/CHEST/22021/604.pdf
Again, it’s published in Chest. Very compelling data for a dose dependent increase when given weekly and especially daily. This covers both children and adults.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23170033
This study was performed by the researchers at UNC, here in the states. Again looking at high doses over long periods leading to a relationship with asthma in adults.
That, Sarah, is how you support an argument. Even these studies have their flaws, but they’re much stronger than the ones you cited. I practice evidence based medicine; since I don’t have the kind of practice that involves giving acetaminophen to kids, it hasn’t been something I’ve delved into until now. But on following your links and reading the associated articles, it was obvious they weren’t a good support for the title of your post here.
So, will I change how I administer medications to my children? No. Why? Because it takes us forever to get through one little bottle of the stuff. As I said above, we use it very judiciously, maybe monthly, probably less. If there was a need to give an analgesic more frequently, I would rely on ibuprofen.
Do not take this as advice on what to do with your own children. Do your homework and due diligence in educating yourself. Discuss things with your pediatrician.
As for the reply and insult… well, you’re welcome to your opinion. You wrote on a topic and seized on articles you could find to support it, without having the years of experience reading and writing these articles to critically appraise what you used as evidence. Not everything published in the medical literature is a quality study and it’s hard to know the difference without knowing the journals and their respective reputations.
Yes, that’s how you support an argument with no common sense involved whatsoever. You would never get my business! Tunnel visioned MDs who keep prescribing medicines that they fail to discern might be causing lifelong harm until the baseball bat of a randomized trial whacks them in the head are the bane of conventional medicine. Thank God my own Father never practiced medicine like this and I was able to see how he conducted himself with his patients so that I could know how to avoid dangerous MDs with this worldview in my adulthood and spare my children the lifelong negative health effects of being in their care!
Wow Sarah! I’m usually all for the discretion of pills and I typically read and review most of you and other’s articles, but dang! Chalk this one up to being beat. Don’t go all nasty on someone, just because they show a myriad of evidence and peer reviewed studies that go against a questionnaire that you posted. I think Larry has been the MOST middle of the road person that also brought some clarity and understanding on this topic! It’s looking bad when one side is bashing and name calling AND the other side is replying with respect and dignity. I hope to not see that again, because I don’t want to be sharing posts that embarrass me like this again. I appreciate your insight Larry, and I thank you for the time you set aside to contribute to this dialog!
Just being completely honest. One of the big problems with conventional medicine today are doctors that have so intellectualized medicine by being overly left brained that they have lost their humanity with the right side of their brain on complete life support.
Sounds like somebody doesn’t know how to respond to evidence…
Wow, thank you Larry. It takes courage to go up against these fear-mongering bloggers who have cult-like followings. Thanks for being middle of the road and balanced in your approach to these studies. It does no one any good too dramatize medical studies and only include information that supports one person’s personal view. There needs to be more voices of reason, like yourself, in the world.
Sarah, You just lost me as a person interested in your viewpoint with your response here – and this was the first time I saw your blog. You are totally off base and owe Larry an apology. He’s showing how he’d support an argument. How can you possibly disrespect that! Larry, thanks for your effort putting it together.
Figures that someone who calmly states facts without insults, fear-mongering or knee-jerk responses would be drummed out by the slave-like followers of this blog who prefer to cover their ears and shout “LALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!!!!” whenever actual science is placed before them, Thanks Larry, your calm and patient response to this article is welcome.
And your degree is in what? Home economics?
I don’t have a degree. I am a Mother and Wife and this comment was not an appropriate expression of disaproval of this blog and this article, pareidolius.
This has become very emotional and much less factual on both sides because we are people and not robots. Not because a group of us are intelligent and a group of us are idiots. A degree does not make an infallible person any more than a blog or an opportunist in posting comments does.
Some people here asked about ways to undo the damage from Tylenol and all other immune system disrupting damage. A good diet (organic fruits/vegetables and grass fed raw milk) is a great place to start. Also lots of natural sunshine and time outdoors is very important. We were not meant to live in these clean little boxes. If all that doesn’t work than I suggest trying parasite therapy (Google it). Basically we were meant to carry a very small parasite load. Only in recent history (indoors, treated water, sterilized food) did we lose our little friends (hygiene hypothesis). A small population of lab grown/cleaned parasites will often calm and distract the immune system. It can reverse or lessen asthma and allergies for most people. It has even shown promise for more serious auto-immune diseases like MS, IBS and Crohn’s disease. Seriously, look it up.
I knew about the negative effects of tylenol which is strangely enough, the only “safe” pain medication a pregnant woman can take, I then researched and found that ibuprofen has no know negative effects, the only studies available show negative effects when taken with other drugs but no data is available about ibuprofen alone, so I the one time I really needed pain relief while pregnant I took advil, I just cannot understand how tylenol is so widely prescribed, like the author, I’ve never owned a bottle and will never allow it in our family.
@ dr. john,
what can we do to strengthen other organs? to release from the lungs?
Good question and a difficult one to answer Melissa. Everything we do is highly personalized and tailor-made to the child. For example, if I put 1000 children in a room with asthma…even if their case histories and symptoms are identical to each other, no two children will have ever the same underlying root causes.
We test for thousands of toxins (specific metals, chemicals, vaccines, pathogens, food toxins, radiation, etc) including exact location in the body and quantity (measured), number of organs that are imbalanced and degree of dysfunction, and more importantly…the exact sequence organs need to be treated in order to “open the lock” for full recovery. A lot more is taken into consideration with each child. Good analogies include unlayering an onion..or entering #’s in the correct order to pop open a combination lock. I may have 80+ different remedies (homeopathy, concentrated phytonutrients, drainage remedies, etc).specific for the kidneys…but I need to find the “one remedy” out of 80 that is going to a perfect energetic match for that particular child. Then the next step in the sequence is revealed and this process is repeated until the whole system is completely balanced and functioning at optimal levels.
Every organ and gland is a link within the chain. When the priority organs are treated, the secondary and tertiary ones often strengthen up on their own automatically. Since we’re dealing with energy and vibration, care programs are very small and easily to do.
Another point worth mentioning: I do not “detox” children. No outside force is ever used. When weak organs (esp. liver, kidneys, colon) are now functioning as they were designed to, the body is now fully capable of detoxing itself beautifully as I monitor and measure the decrease in toxic stress over time. It’s all about matching up the exact right nutritional support to specific organs in the correct order in order to optimize self-healing. And, we do this all remotely (or from a distance) with tremendous success.
Define “energy.” How do you measure this? In calories? Kilopascals? Watts?