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esearchers at a The Ohio State University have found that when participants who took acetaminophen learned about the misfortunes of others, they thought these individuals experienced less pain and suffering, when compared to those who took no painkiller.
“These findings suggest other people’s pain doesn’t seem as big of a deal to you when you’ve taken acetaminophen,” said Dominik Mischkowski, co-author of the study and a former Ph.D. student at Ohio State, now at the National Institutes of Health.
“Acetaminophen can reduce empathy as well as serve as a painkiller,” he said.
Acetaminophen – the main ingredient in the painkiller Tylenol – is the most common drug ingredient in the U.S., found in more than 600 medicines, according to the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, a trade group.
The researchers conducted two experiments, the first involving 80 college students. At the beginning, half the students drank a liquid containing 1,000 mg of acetaminophen, while the other half drank a placebo solution that contained no drug. The students didn’t know which group they were in.
After waiting one hour for the drug to take effect, the participants read eight short scenarios in which someone suffered some sort of pain. One scenario was about a person who suffered a knife cut, and another was about a person experiencing the death of his father.
Participants rated the pain each person in the scenarios experienced from 1 (no pain at all) to 5 (worst possible pain). They also rated how much the protagonists in the scenarios felt hurt, wounded and pained.
Overall, the participants who took acetaminophen rated the pain of the people in the scenarios to be less severe than did those who took the placebo.
A 2004 study scanned the brains of people as they were experiencing pain and while they were imaging other people feeling the same pain. Those results showed that the same part of the brain was activated in both cases.
“In light of those results, it is understandable why using Tylenol to reduce your pain may also reduce your ability to feel other’s pain as well,” said researcher Baldwin Way.
The researchers are continuing to study how acetaminophen may affect people’s emotions and behavior, Way said. They are also beginning to study another common pain reliever – ibuprofen – to see if it has similar results.
sciencedaily.com
May 10, 2016