What the acetaminophen-and-asthma story tells us about our tendency to jump to medical conclusions
An article in Monday’s New York Times examines the hypothesis that acetaminophen increases the risk of childhood asthma.
As reporter Christie Aschwanden points out, the percentage of U.S. children with asthma began to accelerate in the 1980s. That was about the same time that aspirin was found to cause Reye’s syndrome, and parents, at their doctors’ urging, turned en masse to acetaminophen to treat their children’s fevers.
The timing of those two events raised the curiosity of researchers, and, in 1998, a major immunology journal published a paper that argued that the switch to acetaminophen might explain the sudden rise in asthma cases. Many other studies supporting that theory have since been published. Earlier this month, Dr. John McBride, a pediatric pulmonologist at Akron Children’s Hospital in Ohio (and the main expert interviewed for the Times article), recommended in the journal Pediatrics that “until future studies document the safety of this drug, children with asthma or at risk for asthma should avoid the use of acetaminophen.”
http://www.minnpost.com/healthblog/2011/12/21/33992/what_the_acetaminophen-and-asthma_story_tells_us_about_our_tendency_to_jump_to_medical_conclusions
Nice article which does a great job explaining why correlation does not equal causation.
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