3 ms·

I was going to argue that combining paracetamol (APAP) with opiates might make them more effective for pain relief, but then I found this, which points to the o

by kranner 12y ago

I was going to argue that combining paracetamol (APAP) with opiates might make them more effective for pain relief, but then I found this, which points to the opposite (i.e., adding APAP may not increase pain relief): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17965980 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17965980 I didn't read the paper, only the abstract.

DanBC 12y ago
People used to think that combining the two would make them both more effective allowing you to use less of both, thus reducing the toxicity. See for example coproxamol which has a sub-therapeutic dose of paracetamol and dextropropoxyphene. Paracetamol in overdose is very dangerous, but this drug kills you before the paracetamol does becausethe opiate (opiod?) used is so toxic. There's a bunch of stuff about long term pain that we had very wrong ideas about and that we're only recently getting better understanding of.
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  Opiates are incredibly non-toxic compared to APAP. So adding the latter to reduce the former is ... misguided at best.