Acetaminophen (Tylenol) Harmful for Babies

by Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D.
Health Impact News

What if Tylenol is MORE Dangerous After the Baby’s Born?

An article in the New York Times this week warns that prenatal use of acetaminophen—the main ingredient in Tylenol—has been linked to an increased risk of asthma and attention disorders in children whose mothers took the drug.

Acetaminophen is found in over 600 over-the-counter and prescription medications. Petra Arck, Professor of Fetal-Maternal Medicine at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, whose rodent experiments have found that acetaminophen stresses the liver and alters the placenta in pregnant mice, told the Times that because it’s so common pregnant women may be taking more acetaminophen than they are aware.

The damage done by acetaminophen seems to be dose dependent—the more a pregnant woman takes, the more serious the effects in her offspring. But since it’s found in so many products, many marketed for babies and children, what if infants, too, are being exposed to damagingly high levels of acetaminophen?

If acetaminophen can harm the fetus during pregnancy, when the baby has the protection of the mother’s liver, as well as the placenta, what if it’s even more harmful when given directly to infants?

New science has raised troubling concerns about the safety of acetaminophen, the main ingredient in Tylenol, which is nonetheless marketed for pain and fever relief in infants. 

The increasing popularity of acetaminophen to treat fever and pain in small children began in the 1980s after it was discovered that aspirin might cause Reye syndrome, a rare but sometimes fatal disorder that causes seizures, liver swelling, and brain swelling. The concern over Reye syndrome back then seemed to justify halting the use of aspirin. But now there is a growing body of scientific evidence suggesting that we inadvertently replaced aspirin with something more dangerous.

In 2008 a team of researchers from UCSD and San Diego State, headed by Stephen Schultz, Ph.D., conducted a survey that found a 20-fold increase in the risk of brain disorders with use of acetaminophen after vaccination, but not with ibuprofen.

Taken out of context, the Schultz study was not enough to sound an alarm. It relied on participants’ recall and did not include independent verification of the amount of acetaminophen toddlers had been given. Another strike against it was that the study size was small (83 brain damaged children and 80 controls). But when you look at subsequent science that supports Schultz’s results, it becomes harder to understand why the medical community has generally ignored the possible harms of acetaminophen to children.

Indeed, a much larger study, involving more than 205,000 children, also published in 2008 (this time in The Lancet) found use of acetaminophen in the first year of life was associated with inflammatory diseases, including asthma and eczema by age six and seven.

Then in 2010, Schultz and Kevin Becker, Ph.D., who trained at Johns Hopkins in Molecular Biology and Genetics and is currently head of a research unit at the National Institutes of Health, hypothesized that the use of acetaminophen in early childhood “may significantly alter subtle immune processes,” and be a possible cause of both asthma and brain dysfunction.
William Shaw, Ph.D., a clinical chemist who had previously worked for the Centers for Disease Control, provides a detailed explanation of how acetaminophen causes damage: acetaminophen depletes the body’s supply of glutathione. Since glutathione is a molecule essential for clearing toxins, the use of acetaminophen can result in essentially a toxic wash of the brain during development.

​Scientists now understand even more: acetaminophen derails something called DNA methylation, which is vital in the developmental biology of most life as we know it, from bacteria to humans. Unless you are a single-celled yeast or a tiny roundworm, two organisms that don’t use DNA methylation to control development, acetaminophen can disrupt an essential biological process, one that you need to have a healthy brain and body.
William Parker, Ph.D., an associate professor at Duke University Medical School, who has co-authored of over a hundred peer-reviewed articles and whose career has been dedicated to studying immune function, argues we need to be even more concerned about acetaminophen use in infants than in pregnant women.

“Based on available evidence, small children taking it may be many times worse off than during pregnancy,” Parker tells me. “But nobody knows because it’s never been tested. That should be very scary. Anyone who’s taken the time to read the literature will say, ‘Whoa, this is not safe.’”
With two additional studies coming out in the last three months, the total number of peer-reviewed studies finding associations between long-term neurological problems in children and exposure to acetaminophen from conception to early childhood stands at nine. Not one study has shown acetaminophen to be safe. Nine seems like quite a bit, but the FDA, the NHS, and many medical doctors still seem to be waiting for something more.

The accumulated science is enough for me to invoke the precautionary principle: the idea that an intervention must be proven safe before it can be assumed not to cause harm. New parents, as much as expectant couples and pregnant moms, need to take note. As a science journalist and a mother of four, I’m throwing the baby Tylenol in the trash.

Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D., is a science journalist, Fulbright awardee, and co-author, with Dr. Paul Thomas, M.D., of The Vaccine-Friendly Plan: Dr. Paul’s Safe and Effective Approach to Immunity and Health, From Pregnancy Through Your Child’s Teen Years.
www.JenniferMargulis.net

http://healthimpactnews.com/2016/acetaminophen-tylenol-harmful-for-babies/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18805332

The pill is linked to depression – and doctors can no longer ignore it
​By Holly Grigg-Spall

Hormonal contraceptives are used by 3.5 million women in the UK alone. The medical establishment must stop dismissing the risks they carry

Researchers found that women taking the combined oral contraceptive were 23% more likely to be diagnosed with depression.

A newly published study from the University of Copenhagen has confirmed a link between hormonal contraceptives and depression. The largest of its kind, with one million Danish women between the ages of 15 and 34 tracked for a total of 13 years, it’s the kind of study that women such as me, who have experienced the side-effects of birth control-induced depression first hand, have been waiting for.

Women taking pill more likely to be treated for depression, study finds

Researchers found that women taking the combined oral contraceptive were 23% more likely to be diagnosed with depression and those using progestin-only pills (also known as “the mini-pill”) were 34% more likely. Teens were at the greatest risk of depression, with an 80% increase when taking the combined pill, and that risk is two-fold with the progestin-only pill. In addition, other hormone-based methods commonly offered to women seeking an alternative to the pill – such as the hormonal IUS/coil, the patch and the ring – were shown to increase depression at a rate much higher than either kind of oral contraceptives.

In recent years we’ve seen efforts from the NHS and family planning organisations to encourage teens to use these so-called LARCs (long-acting reversible contraceptives), primarily because they eliminate the need to remember to take a pill every day, but also due to the fact they’re commonly believed to have less severe potential side-effects than the pill. The new research suggests this practice is misguided. We already know that those with pre-existing depression may find the pill worsens their symptoms, and if teens were at greater risk of depression, then continuing this practice would be negligent.
 
The researchers note that, because GPs are less likely to prescribe the pill to women who already have depression and because women who do experience depression on the pill are more likely to stop taking it, this study probably underestimates the potential negative affect that hormonal contraceptives can have on mental health. 

Having spent the past eight years researching and writing on the emotional and psychological side-effects of hormonal birth control, I initially felt elated to read this study. Not just for myself, but for the hundreds of women I’ve interviewed over the years. Mood changes are one of the top reasons many women discontinue using the pill within the first year. Finally, here was the kind of large-scale, long-term study I’d been told was necessary before we could seriously talk about this issue or make a change in how we prescribe hormonal contraceptives.

Sweetening the pill: could some birth-control methods kill you?
However, I was naive, because it seems that no study will ever be good enough for the medical community to take women’s experiences seriously. As soon as this research dropped, the experts lined up to deliver their usual mix of gaslighting and paternalistic platitudes. We’re told not to be alarmed, concerned, or deterred from continuing to use our hormonal contraceptives, mostly by men who have never and will never take them themselves (partly because the long-term, large-scale study undertaken by WHO on the “acceptability” of the male pill revealed it would negatively impact their emotional wellbeing).

This “pillsplaining” is specific to discussions of research into the side-effects of hormonal birth control. Usually, when the research is on the pill alone, we’re quickly informed there are many other hormone-based methods to choose from, but unfortunately this new study says those alternatives are even worse. One expert even tried to dismiss the link with depression in pill-taking teens as more likely the result of “teen heartbreak”.

So, why is it that we’re not supposed to take this study seriously? Considering that women are fertile just six days per menstrual cycle and men are fertile every single day, that the burden of avoiding unwanted pregnancy falls to us, regardless of the burden that might have on our health and wellbeing, is nothing short of sexism. After all, there are certainly effective alternatives to hormonal contraceptives –the copper coil, diaphragm, condoms and new technology that’s making it simple for women to practice the fertility awareness method, not to mention, of course, vasectomy and the promise of Vasalgel, a contraceptive injection for men.

Yet, we’re reminded with one medical professional’s response to this new research that “an unwanted pregnancy far outweighs all the other side effects that could occur from a contraceptive.” If that’s true, why bother researching the side-effects at all?

It is important to remember that women are twice as likely to experience depression as men, reportedly due to “the fluctuation of progesterone and oestrogen levels”, in other words our biological femaleness. It’s apparently acceptable to blame women’s depression on the fact that they’re women, but it’s not OK to claim a powerful medication formulated from synthetic hormones could be at fault.

To me, and many other women, these Danish researchers are heroes and criticism of their methods (such as, they should have tracked those women using condoms or the copper IUD as well – even though these options were not available to them; or that women were likely depressed because of menstrual cramps – which the pill is supposed to prevent), only highlights the incredible knots the medical establishment will twist itself into in order to deny there’s a problem with the pill.

One of the study’s authors, Øjvind Lidegaard, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, also brought attention in 2011 to the increased risk of blood clots associated with newer, and supposedly “improved”, hormonal contraceptives such as the ring, the patch and drospirenone-containing pills. Lidegaard plans to focus next on researching the possible “association between taking hormonal birth control and attempting or committing suicide”. Researchers originally flagged up this potential link back in 1970 at the Nelson Pill Hearings, but the topic has not been touched since.

Depression and anxiety from hormonal contraceptives may not be the experience of every woman, but that doesn’t mean it’s not the experience of your friend, your daughter or your partner, and of many women out there, who, in reading about this could have their lives changed for the better.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/03/pill-linked-depression-doctors-hormonal-contraceptives

​http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/2552796