Paracetamol Poisoning: Epidemiology, Diagnosis, Treatment (Status of the Issue)

Abstract

Introduction. Paracetamol (acetaminophen) is an over-the-counter analgesic and antipyretic drug, available in monoform and included in more than 200 combined drugs. Today, paracetamol is widely used in medicine, and therefore available in different age categories, including children from 0 to 18 years old, adults, the elderly and pregnant women.The aim is to systematize data on the epidemiology, diagnosis and treatment of paracetamol poisoning based on data from foreign and domestic literature.Materials and methods. Literary search on the platforms PubMed, Google Scholar, eLibrary.ru, CyberLeninka by keywords “paracetamol, acetaminophen, poisoning, epidemiology, hepatotoxicity, N-acetylcysteine”. Inclusion criteria: original, review articles, randomized and non-randomized clinical trials, meta-analyses and systematic reviews on the topic of paracetamol poisoning.Results and discussion. The literature review presents data on toxic effects, epidemiology, metabolism, and clinical picture; modern research on methods of diagnosis and treatment of paracetamol poisoning.Conclusions. Modern methods of diagnosing paracetamol poisoning allow us to focus not only on determining the concentration of the drug in the blood or the dose taken orally, as a decision-making tool. The development of new biomarkers of liver damage is a promising diagnostic tool, suggesting an “early warning” of potential liver damage.