Bad Medicine

Antifever drugs such as aspirin and acetaminophen, e.g. Tylenol, may prolong symptoms of the flu, Baltimore researchers report. In a review of several studies, flu sufferers who took one of the antifever medications were sick an average of 3.5 days longer than people who did not take either of the drugs. However, more study is needed to confirm the findings, because sicker patients were more likely to be given antifever drugs—and may have been ill longer simply because they were more ill in the first place. Researchers based the findings on several vaccine trials conducted in the 1970s and 1980s. In the studies, patients were injected with one of three disease-causing bacteria or viruses, including the Type A influenza virus, which causes some cases of the flu. Depending on their symptoms, some of the participants were given acetaminophen or aspirin, while others were not. According to a report in the December 2000 issue of Pharmacotherapy, on average, flu symptoms lasted 5.3 days in participants who did not take aspirin or acetaminophen, compared with 8.8 days in people who took the antifever drugs. Exactly why the drugs are linked to prolonged flu symptoms is unclear, the report indicates. One possibility is that reducing fever may interfere with the immune system’s response to an infection, the authors note.