EULAR 2019: Is paracetamol as safe as we think?

Most of the abstracts presented during the opening plenary abstract session were about new drugs (nintedamib in systemic sclerosis, filgotinib in patients with RA who failed to initial therapy with methotrexate). Very interesting results were presented by groups from France and Switzerland and if interested, you can read a very nice summary from my gue Elise van Mulligen, also reporting from EULAR. For many years paracetamol has been considered as a safe drug in almost every clinical scenario. In the last year as part of my research about the effect of immunosuppressive drugs on male fertility I became aware of a possible negative effect of paracetamol on male fertility. This was not only surprising but worrisome since as many of you I consider paracetamol as a very safe drug. Researchers from the University of Nottingham leaded by Jaspreet Kaur presented their results of a very interesting systematic review and meta analysis over adverse events of paracetamol. Their objective was to investigate the association between paracetamol and gastrointestinal, liver, renal and cardiovascular adverse events both in randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and observational studies. After an extensive…