Originally published January 4 2005
NSAIDs kill 16,500 Americans each year, damage intestines of 70 percent of patients
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Here's more drug safety research coming from Dr. David Graham. It shows that over-the-counter painkillers (NSAIDs) like aspirin and ibuprofen, cause widespread damage to the intestines. Intestinal bleeding from these medications kills at least 16,500 Americans each year according to this research (the actual number, though, is estimated to be over 40,000 each year).
- 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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