FDA Orders Lowering of the Amount of Pain Reliever in Vicodin

January 14th, 2011 - 1:45 am ICT by Angela Kaye Mason  

Jan 13 (THAINDIAN NEWS) The health regulators from the Food and Drug Administration have decided to limit the amount on one key painkilling ingredient in a several prescription pain killers such as Vicodin, Percocet, and others. The announcement from the FDA came on Thursday that there will be a new limit set on the amount of acetaminophen that will be allowed in those products.

The new limit is going to be 325 milligrams per capsule. At the current time, there are products on the market which have doses of the drug up to seven hundred milligrams. This can be very dangerous, since acetaminophen is linked to literally thousands of medical cases of liver damage annually.

Acetaminophen is a pain reliever that is found in many over the counter medications, such as Tylenol, NyQuil, and thousands of others which are used to treat symptoms such as headache, sore throat, fever, sprains, muscle aches, and more. But the fact that these medications are often used in the home makes the high level of acetaminophen in prescription pain killers even more dangerous.

While the prescriptions such as Vicodin, Percocet, and Oxycodone may contain safe levels of acetaminophen alone, patients often mix these products with other acetaminophen containing medications which the purchased over the counter. It is for this reason that the FDA is also considering new requirements for labeling of medications which contain acetaminophen, which now often is simply labeled as APAP, instead of the word “acetaminophen.”

Edit 2:22 pm EST : Fixed spelling

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