CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – Calls to poison centers involving liver injuries caused by medications, supplements, alcohol and other substances jumped nearly 400% between 2000-2024, according to a new study from UVA Health.
UVA Health Blue Ridge Poison Center Director Dr. Christoper Holstege, MD, led a team of researchers who looked at liver damage caused by “xenobiotics”, which are foreign substances not naturally found in the body.
This category includes drugs, food additives, alcohol and environmental pollutants, according to Dr. Holstege.
“What’s particularly concerning is that more than 80% of those exposures required hospitalization,” said Blue Ridge Poison Center doctor and pharmacologist, Dr. Blair Towers, MD, in a conference call with reporters. “And the majority resulted in critical care admissions, and serious medical outcomes in, including death, were noted.”
“The two most frequent were acetaminophen, that is a product and a chemical that is over-the-counter in a lot of products, and is in prescription products, that people, I think, know is used for fever, it’s used for pain relief,” Dr. Holstege said in that same call. “And then there is also, ethanol, or alcohol, that people will drink, alcoholic beverages.”
One of the concerning things the researchers say they’ve found is a lot of these cases are intentional overdoses.
“We… see it easy access for suicides. It’s over-the-counter, you can buy very large bottles,’ Dr. Hostege said. “They’re not in blister packs, and we see a lot of suicide attempts with acetaminophen. I’ve had two this week, in my clinical practice at the University of Virginia.”
“And we also had a previous study where we looked at the data from the National Poison Data System. It is one of the leading, agents used in youth for, suicide attempts, and that’s concerning,” noted Dr. Hostege. “And so, as a society, it’s a question of how do we look at this so that maybe there’s other ways we can either educate or package that may prevent, those injuries from occurring.”
Another issue they’re seeing is overdosing in older adults.
“In older individuals, it was more, a mix of intentional and unintentional, and acute on chronic and chronic, which may indicate that it’s being used for different reasons, maybe like pain, since, you know, since the opioid epidemic, we’ve cut back on our prescribing of opioids in 2015, and we did see an increase,” according to Dr. Towers. “In older individuals and everyone around that time, and that could because people are using this medication more for pain uses, which is… it’s a great pain medication, we just need to make sure that we’re not overusing it and causing organ toxicity.”
“Yeah, really important to follow the instructions with acetaminophen,” added Dr. Holstege. “It’s a wonderful pharmaceutical agent. It’s been around for a long time. It’s safe if it’s used appropriately, but people need to read the instructions and take the medications as they’re supposed to.”
The researchers also identified increases in liver injuries caused by stimulants and street drugs, herbal and dietary supplements and environmental toxins, but these were far less common than the injuries caused by acetaminophen and alcohol, according to a UVA Health release.
