Officials will also tout the drug leucovorin as a potential autism treatment, in what President Donald Trump has billed as a “very important” announcement.

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I’ve got no idea what the alleged evidence for this is, but what I do know is that the people making these announcements are completely untrustworthy.

  • voracitude@lemmy.world
    41·
    20 hours ago

    I appreciate the sources, but I don’t appreciate the

    You… you didn’t try at all, did you?

    Because nothing you’ve posted here is news to me. I think you’ll find I said:

    If the danger is people not bothering to check what they’re ingesting, I’ll concede that’s a clear and ever-present danger - just not one specific to acetaminophen.

    So I’ll just quote directly from your very first link, because the rest of them don’t say anything different:

    Responsible for 56,000 emergency department visits and 2600 hospitalizations, acetaminophen poisoning causes 500 deaths annually in the United States. Notably, around 50% of these poisonings are unintentional, often resulting from patients misinterpreting dosing instructions or unknowingly consuming multiple acetaminophen-containing products.

    And

    At therapeutic levels, acetaminophen is generally considered safe. However, instances of acetaminophen toxicity often arise due to patient misconceptions about dosing or a lack of awareness regarding its presence in multiple medications they may be consuming. Intentional ingestion of large doses also contributes to toxicity.

    So, in around 50% of cases, the danger is people not bothering to check what they’re ingesting. They took other medications containing acetaminophen and didn’t know it, or they took other drugs that amplified the ability of the acetaminophen to cause damage (like alcohol, which is made very clear you’re not supposed to take with acetaminophen).

    In the rest, overdoses were intentionally taken, so you can’t really count those in the danger statistics since the goal was to use it dangerously.

    To put this in perspective:

    When taken at therapeutic doses, acetaminophen has a good safety profile. The therapeutic doses are:

    • 10 to 15 mg/kg/dose in children every 4 to 6 hours with a maximum dose of 80 mg/kg/d
    • 325 to 1000 mg/dose in adults every 4 to 6 hours, with a maximum daily dose of 4 g/d

    Toxicity is likely to develop in adults at:

    • >12 g over a 24 hours
    • 7.5 to 10 g in a single dose
    • Doses >350mg/kg

    Toxicity in children occurs following a single dose of 150 mg/kg or 200 mg/kg in otherwise healthy children aged 1 to 6.

    Just do the maths on how much acetaminophen you normally take for any given ailment, and you’ll realise just how far beyond those doses the danger really lies (or maybe that you’re one of the people who doesn’t check what they’re taking).

    So, to conclude: acetaminophen is indeed dangerous if you don’t pay attention to what you’re taking or how much. Other examples of things that are dangerous if you don’t use them right: cars, ovens, lawnmowers, cotton buds, the internet… the full list is quite long, actually, but I’m sure you get the idea.