16/08/2015
IBUPROFEN
Ibuprofen has a recognized anti-inflammatory, analgesic and antipyretic property and is one of the most commonly NSAIDs used worldwide. It is characterized by a high safety profile and very low liver toxicity incidence. Along with paracetamol and aspirin, ibuprofen has become one of the largest ever selling over the counter drugs. It was first introduced to the UK market in 1969 and due to the low rate of gastrointestinal adverse events, it has ever since almost replaced aspirin, indometacin and phenylbutazone in arthritic patients[44]. A scarce number of hepatotoxicity reports involving ibuprofen were published, associated to both hepatocellular and cholestatic liver damage. Indeed, one of the latter cases was linked to vanishing bile duct syndrome[45,46]. It has also been suggested that ibuprofen may increase the risk of liver injury when administered to patients with chronic hepatitis C. An ibuprofen associated increase of transaminases > 5 × UNL was recently reported in three patients with chronic hepatitis C, eventually confirmed by re-challenge[47].
Traversa et al[23] in their cohort study that recruited thousands of patients receiving various NSAIDs confirmed that ibuprofen has a very low liver toxicity rate: Only two patients showed ibuprofen-associated liver injury (out of 126 cases that had NSAIDs). Despite the massive use of this drug worldwide, a low rate of ibuprofen liver toxicity along with a low incidence of gastrointestinal, renal and cardiovascular serious events characterizes the safety profile. This is probably based on the fact ibuprofen has a short plasma half life and does not form pathological metabolites.The absence of reports including ibuprofen induced liver injury in several studies and meta-analyses, strongly suggests that ibuprofen is an unlikely cause of liver disease[48-50].
Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2997980/
Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) constitute a family of drugs, which taken as a group, represents one of the most frequently prescribed around the world. Thus, not surprisingly NSAIDs, along with anti-infectious agents, list on the top for ...