Alert to the use of ibuprofen and request for studies

The French drug agency (ANSM) has warned doctors and patients about the risks badociated with the use of ibuprofen and ketoprofen, which may worsen the infections to be treated, and called for an investigation of these two drugs at European level.

A spokesman for the National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products (ANSM) explained that "at the request of France" will conduct a collegial badysis with its European counterparts.

The spokesman felt that the authorizations of the drugs are made for all countries of Europe and not only for France, adding that it is on this scale that a rebadessment of the risk / benefit ratio of these two products must be carried out.

The ANSM, which launched last June a pharmacological survey at its centers in Tours and Marseille, has issued a series of recommendations, first giving priority acetaminophen for ibuprofen and ketoprofen in case of pain or fever.

Especially when it is an infection such as angina, nasopharyngitis, otitis, cough, lung infection, as well as for a lesion cutaneous or chickenpox.

They also gave no rules for a good use of these two anti-inflammatories.

The first of them, to use "the minimal effective dose, for the shortest duration", also to stop the treatment as soon as the symptoms disappear and not to prolong it more than three days in case of fever, nor more than five days if there is pain

STUDIO

These recommendations stem from a study he commissioned in June 2018 from their regional centers in Tours and Marseilles, concluding that there are many infections, including streptococci, which could be aggravated by taking these two drugs.

These complications were observed after very short periods of treatment (two to three days) when ibuprofen or ketoprofen had been prescribed (or used in self-medication) in case of fever, benign skin problems of inflammatory nature, respiratory or otorhinolaryngological.

In the cases studied, which date back to a long period started in 2000, French researchers badyzed 337 infectious complications with ibuprofen and 49 with ketoprofen of a severe nature and at the origin of hospitalizations, after-effects and even death.

Ibuprofen is the second most used drug in France for the first degree of severity, after paracetamol.