Summary

Original source:
http://olympics.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=healthNews&storyID=7226437

Details

• More than 70 percent of patients who took painkillers such as ibuprofen for more than three months suffered damage to their small intestines, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.
• The study is yet another blow to patients trying to find ways to treat arthritis pain, after reports that the most advanced drugs, called COX-2 inhibitors, can raise the risk of heart death.
• Dr. David Y. Graham of the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and colleagues studied 21 patients taking a range of drugs called non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDS.
• They compared them to 20 patients taking either acetaminophen, an unrelated painkiller, or nothing.
• "Small-bowel injury was seen in 71 percent of NSAID users compared with 10 percent of controls," they wrote in Monday's issue of the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.
• "We have always known that NSAIDs can cause potentially deadly stomach complications, but the extent of the impact on the small intestine was largely unknown until now," Graham added.
• Arthritis pain is incurable but can be treated with a range of drugs, including NSAIDS such as aspirin, ibuprofen or naproxen; acetaminophen; or the newer drugs called COX-2 inhibitors.
• NSAIDS work very well but damage the stomach and intestine.
• They are blamed for 16,500 deaths a year in the United States alone, Graham said.
• "Anybody who takes aspirin or (other) NSAIDS for a year has a 1 to 4 percent risk of serious gastrointestinal complications," Graham said in a telephone interview.
• "If the drugs didn't have such benefits, we'd have taken them off the market some time ago."
• Acetaminophen, sold generically and also under the brand name Tylenol, does not work for many patients, Graham said.

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