Acetaminophen Safe After Heart Attack

A new study in animals finds that acetaminophen is safe to use as a pain reliever and fever reducer after a heart attack, but it does not protect the heart muscle.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, USA) conducted a study to examine the safety of acetaminophen--a popular over-the-counter pain medication under the brand name Tylenol--to relieve pain or reduce fever in people who have had heart attacks, and to determine if acetaminophen could be used in conjunction with reperfusion therapy to salvage heart muscle cells damaged by the heart attack and improve the heart's ventricular function.

The researchers assigned eight sheep and 11 rabbits to a group that received acetaminophen and an equal number of sheep and rabbits to a control group that did not receive any drug. The researchers surgically induced the heart attack and then restored blood flow.

The study found that acetaminophen had no effect on the amount of blood flow to the heart muscle nor on how much heart muscle was saved, and also had no effect on blood pressure, ventricular function, or heart rate. The results are at odds with a previous study using dogs, which concluded that acetaminophen reduced the area affected by a heart attack by 22%. The study was published in the June 2006 issue of the American Journal of Physiology-Heart and Circulatory Physiology.

Some studies have suggested there is an increased risk of stroke and heart attack among patients taking non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), and a recent clinical study from Denmark suggested that NSAIDs may increase mortality if taken after a heart attack. In search of a substitute, Dr. Robert C. Gorman, an associate professor of surgery at the University of Pennsylvania, and colleagues found that acetaminophen is a safe alternative to NSAIDs after a heart attack.



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