Health & Medicine - Posted by Heather Hare-Rochester on Tuesday, May 4, 2010 12:48 - 3 Comments 
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Teens have trouble with Tylenol dosage
When presented with a mock scenario in which they might choose to take acetaminophen (brand name Tylenol), nearly 85 percent of teens would have put themselves at risk of overdosing on the medication that can cause liver damage, even when they have access to label and dosage instructions, according to a new study. Among those teens with limited health literacy, the percentage of potential overdosing rises to 94 percent. (Credit: iStockphoto)
U. ROCHESTER (US)—The majority of teens say they have never heard of acetaminophen—or what the appropriate dosing of it is even with access to the label instructions—despite having taken the medication recently.
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The text of this article by Futurity is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License.
“Teens are starting to medicate themselves without parental input, so these numbers are incredibly concerning,” says Laura Shone, associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Rochester Medical Center.
“Acetaminophen may be an over-the-counter medication, but that doesn’t mean it is completely safe. In severe cases, misuse of it can cause liver failure,” says Shone, author of an abstract presented at the Pediatric Academic Society meeting in Vancouver, Canada.
When presented with a mock scenario in which they might choose to take acetaminophen (brand name Tylenol), nearly 85 percent of teens in the study would have put themselves at risk of overdosing on the medication that can cause liver damage.
Among those teens with limited health literacy, the percentage of potential overdosing rises to 94 percent.
The study recruited 266 young people in Monroe County, N.Y., between the ages of 16 and 23 in 2008 and 2009. The adolescents’ health literacy was assessed through the Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine (REALM) survey for participants 18 and older and the REALM-Teen for those younger than 18. About 36 percent of teens had limited health literacy and 64 percent had adequate health literacy.
This study was supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development.
More University of Rochester news: www.urmc.rochester.edu/news/
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3 Comments
If it is of any interest, one bottle of Tylenol taken at one time will destroy your liver if treatment is not started in twelve hours. For some people the dosage and the time limit can be much less. Also, taking much more than the recommended dose for several days can have the same effect. Any OTC medication can have deadly side effects.
Tammie Wiltz
Also not good to take while ,before,or after consuming alcohol~and definately not good to intake if you have any form of hepititis!!
Of course there are not many that know that they took acetaminophen. They just know they took “tylenol”. No-one knows ALL the names that have been thought up for their medication. This is irrelevant to the health risk. In other countries, this stuff is known as paracetamol. Systematic chemical name is N-(4-hydroxyphenyl)acetamide. Did you know you took N-(4-hydroxyphenyl)acetamide last week? And then there are dozens of other brand names associated with this painkiller: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paracetamol_brand_names
Also a pity that there is not even a hint for a reason for the potential overdosing indicated. Is it because they would take too much at a time? Too many doses per day? Or is it (more likely, seeing the name “risk”) that they could not cite by heart what the maximum daily dose is, or how many mg are in a single tablet?
All in all this looks like a “duh” story to me.