Is paracetamol any good for treating flu?

ConclusionThis double-blind, randomised controlled trial aimed to assess the effect of paracetamol on reducing viral load and clinical symptoms of flu. The researchers found paracetamol had no effect on any outcome in people with flu – on viral load, temperature or clinical symptoms – and feel there is not enough evidence to provide the drug as a treatment. However, there are a few points to bear in mind. The randomised design and double-blind nature of the trial are strengths, as these should reduce the risk of bias in how patients were allocated to groups, as well as the risk of bias in outcome reporting.  Although efforts were made to account for risk, there was an imbalance in the number of participants with respiratory conditions and prior flu vaccination, which may have affected the results. But probably the most important limitation is that this was a relatively small trial, which set out to examine the effect of paracetamol on viral load as its main outcome. Paracetamol is a drug intended to treat fever and mild to moderate pain, not cure infection. For that, an antiviral drug would be required, but there is still a longstanding debate about how effective antivirals actually are.While the trial did also examine paracetamol's effect on symptoms, the study may have been too small to reliably detect differences between the groups for these symptom outcomes. The researchers did provide calculations to show that their trial had a sufficient sample size to reliably de...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Heart/lungs Medication Source Type: news