While the ‘opioid epidemic’ might be grabbing all the headlines at the moment, Australian toxicologists are reminding us that paracetamol is the most common drug used in overdoses in this country.
What’s more the numbers of both paracetamol-related hospital admissions and liver injury have been increasing over the past decade at a rate that far exceeds the rate of population increase.
According to a retrospective study recently published in The Medical Journal of Australia, there has been an average 3.8% annual increase in the number of paracetamol-related hospital admissions since 2007, and a mean 7.7% annual increase in paracetamol-related liver injury cases, whereas the population has been increasing at a rate of only 1.6% annually.
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