14 DAY TRIAL // A team of health researchers at the University of Otago, Wellington, think that there might be link between the early use of paracetamol and the development of allergies and asthma in children, aged five to six years old.
A report was made by Professor Julian Crane, based on data gathered from the New Zealand Asthma and Allergy Cohort Study.
This study focused on the use of paracetamol by 505 infants in Christchurch and 914 children, aged 5 to 6 years, in Wellington and Christchurch, in order to see if they developed any signs of allergies or asthma.
Professor Crane said that the study concluded that “children who used paracetamol before the age of 15 months (90%) were more than three times as likely to become sensitized to allergens and twice as likely to develop symptoms of asthma at six years old than children not using paracetamol.”
He also added that, for now, the team has absolutely no idea why this has happened, but that clinical trials are necessary “to see whether these associations are causal or not, and to clarify the use of this common medication.”
Another thing discovered by the team was that by the age of six years old, 95% of the study sample were using paracetamol, and there was a rise in the risk for wheeze and asthma.
The researchers do say that it also depends of the amount of paracetamol used, and that the risk is higher for those with serious asthma symptoms.
If paracetamol is not frequently used during infancy, the risk of allergies is reduced in childhood.
A possible explanation could be that paracetamol affects antigen processing in the immune system early in life, or this could be linked to to free radical damage and enhancement of allergic inflammation and bronchospasm.
The exact nature of the link between paracetamol and allergy/asthma is unknown, and there might be many different mechanisms, even if professor Crane said that “the results at this stage are supportive of a role for paracetamol in asthma and allergic disease.”
The study conducted by the University of Otago finally concluded that a causal relationship between paracetamol and allergy/asthma could not be established, but also reminded that there is no prof of the efficiency of paracetamol against disease outcome when used against fever, so the guidelines for its use remain unclear.
This study has been funded by the Health Research Council and the David and Cassie Anderson bequest and has recently been published in Clinical and Experimental Allergy.