Commonly Used Painkillers Linked To Risk Of Heart Failure

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as ibuprofen and naproxen and diclofenac, are often used to treat pain and inflammation. However, a new study revealed that taking these painkillers is linked to an increased risk of heart failure.

According to BBC News, many of the commonly used drugs to treat inflammation and pain have been introduced to the public years ago with minimal safety checks. Now, researchers found that there is a clear connection between the use of NSAIDs and heart failure. However, the question remains: which drugs pose the greatest risk, and at what doses?

To get a much better understanding of what this is, a team of researchers led by Giovanni Corrao at the University of Milano-Bicocca sift through the medical records of about 10 million NSAID users, aged 77 on average in four different European countries including Germany, Britain, the Netherlands, and Italy. Researchers found that there have been 92,163 hospital admissions caused by heart failure. They also checked to see which if the 27 drugs, and at what doses each of the admitted patients was taking. Overall, they determined that the current use of NSAID slightly elevated the risk of hospital admission compared to past use of nine drugs.

These included diclofenac, ibuprofen, indomethacin, ketorolac, naproxen, nimesulide, and piroxicam, along with two COX 2 inhibitors, etoricoxib and rofecoxib and the increased risk of hospital admission ranged from 16% for naproxen to 83% for ketorolac. Researchers also found that if diclofenac, etoricoxib, indomethacin, piroxicam, and rofecoxib are administered at very high doses, some doubled the risk of hospital admission. The researchers stress that this should be interpreted with caution, The Guardian reported.

The researchers stress that the study was observational and that it did not benefit from the controlled condition of and experiment, so conclusions about the cause and effect relationship cannot be made. However, according to them the results "offer further evidence that the most frequently used individual NSAIDs and selective COX2 inhibitors are associated with an increased risk of hospital admissions," Medical Xpress reported.

Meanwhile, Helen Williams, a consultant pharmacist for cardiovascular disease at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in Britain, observed that country's National Health Service had been steering away from the powerful NSAIDs in recent years. "Reassuringly," she added, "use of the most commonly purchased NSAID, ibuprofen, was associated with a lower overall increased risk" compared to the other medicines, she added in a comment released by the Science Media Centre.