The findings of a multi-centre study involving 1,028 participants across Europe suggested that using paracetamol at least once a week increases the risk of asthma.
Half of the participants were recruited as cases of self-reported diagnosis of asthma and half were healthy volunteers with no diagnosis of asthma as control. They found that cases were about 2.5 - 2.9 times more likely to have taken paracetamol regularly than controls but they did not find any association between use of other painkillers and asthma. The researchers said "there is now a need to carry out suitable intervention studies to determine whether the link is causal".
Critics say there are problems with this study - eg a case-control study cannot prove causation and cannot rule out that asthma causes people to take more painkillers. It was suggested that a randomised controlled study of healthy participants to paracetamol or not will produce more conclusive results.
Source: "The relation between paracetamol use and asthma: a GA2LEN European case-control study". European Respiratory Journal 2008; Published online before print June 25
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