Authors : Ervilla Dass
DOI : 10.18231/j.ijcaap.2020.004
Volume : 5
Issue : 1
Year : 2020
Page No : 14-18
Adverse Drug Reactions (ADRs) are common and constitute major health problem. During the last decade liver toxicity has been one of the most frequent reasons for pharmacovigilance safety reports and the withdrawal from the market of an approved medicinal product. Liver is a major organ involved in the systemic detoxification and deposition of endogenous and exogenous substances. Liver dysfunction challenges not only health care professionals but also the pharmaceutical industry and drug regulatory agencies. Drug-Induced Liver Injury (DILI) also referred as drug-induced hepatotoxicity, forms a major clinical problem, which has become the leading cause of acute liver failure and transplantation in Western countries. Drug-induced hepatotoxicity is one of the major causes of acute and chronic liver disease. It is also the most common adverse event that halts the development of a new drug or leads to the withdrawal of approved drugs from the market. Therefore, there is a need for guidance on how to act when non-clinical and/or clinical signals of hepatotoxicity are detected in order to improve human safety. The present review study was done by extensive literature search using the keywords such as, Adverse Drug Reactions, Drug-Induced Hepatotoxicity, Hepatoprotectives, Hepatotoxicity, Liver Injury, Methionine and N-Acetyl –L–Cysteine.
The current therapy for paracetamol-induced hepatic toxicity is N-acetyl L-cysteine (NAC), which is a cysteine prodrug and GSH precursor and is often given as a treatment for paracetamol overdose. N-acetyl L-cysteine must be administered within eight hours of paracetamol overdose for maximum efficacy. DL-methionine also has been proved to have hepatoprotective effect in paracetamol-induced hepatotoxicity.
Keywords: Adverse Drug Reactions, Drug-Induced Hepatotoxicity, Hepatoprotectives, Hepatotoxicity, Liver Injury, Methionine, N-Acetyl –L–Cysteine