“These drugs worked together to improve liver injury even when out of the previously established therapeutic window and so we think there’s significant potential for clinical application.” “We tried to model that in our studies where we gave fish Tylenol first, waited 18 hours, and gave them a new nitric oxide-based drug combined with the clinically approved drug,” said study co-senior author Wolfram Goessling, MD, PhD.

Unfortunately, most overdose-specific symptoms, such as confusion and intestinal bleeding, don’t occur until the liver injury is critical. The only federally approved treatment for acetaminophen toxicity, N-acetylcysteine (NAC), is most effective if a patient seeks medical help within 8 to 12 hours of overdose. The research team also showed, using zebrafish and mice, how manipulating these pathways with drugs could help in the clinic, specifically by improving treatment of toxic liver injury caused by acetaminophen overdose. In the journal Cell Reports, the researchers described how nitric oxide-which is commonly used to relax cardiac blood vessels in heart disease patients-enhances liver growth and regeneration independently of its effect on blood vessels. Accidental acetaminophen overdoses commonly occur-and with fatal consequences for hundreds of people each year-when those who feel sick and are unaware of the dangers posed by the over-the-counter pain and fever reducer exceed the safe dosage. The human liver can safely process up to 4 grams (8 pills) of acetaminophen-best known as Tylenol ®-in a 24-hour period, but going over that amount risks poisoning or killing liver cells. hospital visits related to acute liver failure. Harvard stem cell scientists studying the effect of nitric oxide on liver growth and regeneration appear to have serendipitously discovered a markedly improved treatment for liver damage caused by acetaminophen toxicity-the cause of half the U.S.

Antidote for acetaminophen toxicity