Paracetamol disrupts early embryogenesis by cell cycle inhibition • Hacker News Board

Re: Paracetamol disrupts early embryogenesis by cell cycle inhibition

#171

Post by thayne » Mon, Aug 25, 2025, 12:47 AM UTC

littlestymaar wrote: post #105

pjerem wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but it’s pretty easy overdose on paracetamol. Since it’s a mild and really common painkiller, sometimes seen as not dangerous, someone uneducated about it who is really suffering could easily take 3 or 4 times the dose. Unlike a lot of drugs, you are not going to have a lot of immediate side effects if you overdose on paracetamol. You’ll just horribly die some days after,

> someone uneducated about it who is really suffering could easily take 3 or 4 times the dose. And the solution is simple: educate people about that. And it's not something hard to do, just have pharmacists say “respect the dose as it will kill you if you don't” every time they sell things and it'll work.

But Tylenol/acetaminophen/paracetamol is an over the counter drug, so there is no pharmacist involved in most sales. And I certainly wouldn't count on everyone reading the tiny text on the bottle.

Re: Paracetamol disrupts early embryogenesis by cell cycle inhibition

#172

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Aug 25, 2025, 1:16 AM UTC

sigpwned wrote: post #115

WorkerBee28474 wrote: post #92

There is mounting talk of a link between Paracetamol/Acetaminophen/Tylenol and autism. Some links: https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/using-acetaminophen-during-pre... https://jennifermargulis.substack.com/p/why-this-doctor-is-c...

A study published in JAMA in 2024 concluded that there is no evidence for that claim ( https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2817406 ): Question: Does acetaminophen use during pregnancy increase children’s risk of neurodevelopmental disorders? Findings: In this population-based study, models without sibling controls identified marginally increased risks of autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disord…

[deleted]

Re: Paracetamol disrupts early embryogenesis by cell cycle inhibition

#173

Post by thayne » Mon, Aug 25, 2025, 1:28 AM UTC

whazor wrote: post #76

Terr_ wrote: post #18

I've always had an (unreasonable?) dislike of Paracetamol/Tylenol ever since I found out it was the #1 cause of acute liver failure in the US. Liver failure is scary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetamol_poisoning

This send me into a whole rabbit hole. Mostly children get paracetamol overdose. Then I learned that in US/UK kids get paracetamol in liquid form with all kinds of flavours. Which is much harder to dose correctly when the kid spits or drools it out. Total culture shock for me, as in Europe the default for children is rectal ingestion (which is probably a culture shock as well for Americans). Any how, with pills it is…

As someone in the US, I've only used liquid tylenol for my kids when they were infants and pills were a choking hazard.

Otherwise, it's much easier to get them to take a pill than drink a liquid.

Re: Paracetamol disrupts early embryogenesis by cell cycle inhibition

#174

Post by bitwize » Mon, Aug 25, 2025, 1:31 AM UTC

alwa wrote: post #170

epgui wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Andrew Wakefield and RFK Jr. heroically tried to find I'm not sure if that was supposed to be sarcastic, but these two people have done more harm to public health, and are responsible for more health dis/mis-information, than pretty much anyone I can think of. (I am a biochemist, no conflict of interest)

In gp’s defense—I interpreted their formulation to suggest vaccine skeptics applied effort to an heroic degree/amount, not that the effort was of heroic virtue. That is, that those people applied ridiculously high levels of effort to searching for an effect, and still did not find an effect. As distinct from the retort that “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”: It can be, if you’ve tried hard enough to ga…

I was being highly, highly sarcastic. People still banging the vaccine-autism drum are heroes only in their own mind.

Re: Paracetamol disrupts early embryogenesis by cell cycle inhibition

#175

Post by thayne » Mon, Aug 25, 2025, 1:43 AM UTC

basisword wrote: post #117

Terr_ wrote: post #18

I've always had an (unreasonable?) dislike of Paracetamol/Tylenol ever since I found out it was the #1 cause of acute liver failure in the US. Liver failure is scary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetamol_poisoning

I'm finding all the 'liver failure' comments on this post fascinating. The dose is on the back on the packet, as is the time interval between doses and the maximum number of pills per day. To overdose you need to ignore that. Given all the mention of 'Tylenol' I'm assuming most of the commenters are American - is this a thing in the US where you just take a random number of pills and ignore the labelling or treat it…

I think there are a few possible factors:

- different packages of the same medication have different doses per pill. So you might read one package that says to take two pills, then later you buy a different package of the same painkiller that says one pill, but you're lazy, and don't read the label for this, and assume it is the same as last time, so you end up doubling the dose.

- For ibuprofen, the label often says if one dose isn't sufficient, then you can take another pill (with a maximum number in 24 hours). People may assume this is the case for Tylenol as well, but I don't think it is.

- people may read the size of the dose, but skip over the warning about the maximum you can take in a 24 hour period.

- The directions are in small hard to read text, which makes all of the above points worse.

Not that any of those are a good excuse not to read the label, but, well, people make bad decisions all the time.

Re: Paracetamol disrupts early embryogenesis by cell cycle inhibition

#176

Post by WorkerBee28474 » Mon, Aug 25, 2025, 1:58 AM UTC

sigpwned wrote: post #115

WorkerBee28474 wrote: post #92

There is mounting talk of a link between Paracetamol/Acetaminophen/Tylenol and autism. Some links: https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/using-acetaminophen-during-pre... https://jennifermargulis.substack.com/p/why-this-doctor-is-c...

A study published in JAMA in 2024 concluded that there is no evidence for that claim ( https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2817406 ): Question: Does acetaminophen use during pregnancy increase children’s risk of neurodevelopmental disorders? Findings: In this population-based study, models without sibling controls identified marginally increased risks of autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disord…

The 1 study you linked does not disprove the newer 46-study analysis that I linked. Quoting from it:

"We identified 46 studies for inclusion in our analysis. Of these, 27 studies reported positive associations (significant links to NDDs), 9 showed null associations (no significant link), and 4 indicated negative associations (protective effects). Higher-quality studies were more likely to show positive associations."

Re: Paracetamol disrupts early embryogenesis by cell cycle inhibition

#177

Post by AngryData » Mon, Aug 25, 2025, 2:11 AM UTC

latchkey wrote: post #157

AngryData wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smoking certainly isn't good, but it also isn't some super-poison like some people like to pretend. Nearly half of US smoked in the 40s and 50s and they had no problem having tons of kids.

> but it also isn't some super-poison like some people like to pretend My mom's dead from lung cancer, and my dad is basically on palliative care. He's a barely walking billboard for "smoking is bad for you".

Yeah that sucks, but now compare its mortality rate to other substances people get addicted to.

Re: Paracetamol disrupts early embryogenesis by cell cycle inhibition

#178

Post by jasperry » Mon, Aug 25, 2025, 2:45 AM UTC

kuschku wrote: post #61

a3w wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most, if not all, medication would carry a poisonous symbol, if it were not taken out of regulation for that. Mostly, you kill organs by any overdose. Roughly: - Paracetamol overdose can cause severe liver damage and may be fatal. - Ibuprofen in high doses can lead to kidney injury and stomach bleeding. - Aspirin overdose may result in salicylate poisoning, causing ringing in the ears, confusion, and metabolic acidos…

That's why it's recommended to combine a half dose of ibuprofen and a half dose of paracetamol at the same time. (Plus some vitamin C) Together they have higher pain killung effects than each alone, and the side effects are reduced as they affect different body parts. And the vitamin C reduces the damage to the stomach lining.

That's very interesting about vitamin C, I never heard that it can reduce stomach lining damage. It's surprising because things with vitamin C tend to give me heartburn, I assumed because they were acidic. Do you have any references?

Re: Paracetamol disrupts early embryogenesis by cell cycle inhibition

#179

Post by wiredpancake » Mon, Aug 25, 2025, 3:15 AM UTC

Anyone know what the long term side effects are?

I've been taking multiple paracetamol tablets for years now, almost out of habit now.

Re: Paracetamol disrupts early embryogenesis by cell cycle inhibition

#180

Post by Analemma_ » Mon, Aug 25, 2025, 3:38 AM UTC

opan wrote: post #74

Analemma_ wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naproxen sodium is also a lot better, and is slightly safer than ibuprofen to take for extended periods. I had severe sciatica for the better part of a year, and the only thing that kept me somewhat functional was ~1000mg/day of naproxen, which isn’t great for you but would’ve been a lot worse if it had been ibuprofen (never mind opiates or something).

Did your sciatica go away on its own or did you introduce some new exercises to your routine? I've had some pain in my left leg for a few months now that is likely sciatica. I did go to the doctor, but it wasn't a particularly helpful visit.

I did physical therapy which mostly involved strengthening core muscles - if the cause is a herniated disc, which it usually is, this can slightly speed up the recovery process because a stronger core can push the disc back into place. But this is a speedup in the sense of "8-10 months instead of 10-12". Welcome, certainly, but not a silver bullet.

The other thing the PT taught me was nerve glides (also called nerve flosses). These don't seem to make recovery any faster, but help a decent amount with pain and tightness .

Sadly, that plus loading up on NSAIDs appears to be about all you can do for most cases of sciatica. I got a consult with a back surgeon who basically said, "I can operate if you want, but it probably won't help much, you just have to wait".

Good luck: it can be a pretty miserable time, but the good news is that most cases of sciatica do in fact clear up on their own even without PT. It can just take a while and you'll be hurting in the meantime.