New Tylenol (Acetaminophen) Recommendations to FDA

Tylenol (acetaminophen) is in the news, but not because of a recall or any new drug warnings.

Instead, health experts are concerned about the many accidental Tylenol overdosages that affect people each year. To help reduce them, a joint panel of several FDA committees have made several recommendations to the FDA, including lowering the single adult dose to 650 mg, lowering the maximum adult daily dose, making the 500 mg pill available by prescription only, banning prescription medicines that combine Tylenol with a narcotic, like hydrocodone or codeine, and placing a black-box warning on medicines that combine acetaminophen with another prescription pain ingredient.

How will this affect parents if the FDA adopts these recommendations? Besides changing the way parents themselves take Tylenol and Tylenol containing products, since many teens reach the single adult dose, it will likely affect the dose of Tylenol that their kids can take. It doesn't look like the dose of Tylenol will change for younger children though, although parents should still be careful about combining Tylenol with another Tylenol containing product, such as a multi-symptom cold medicine with acetaminophen.

The other big change for parents of younger children may come if the FDA follows the joint panel's recommendation to limit liquid Tylenol to a single formulation, so that you might not have the more concentrated Tylenol drops to give an infant or toddler vs. the less concentrated Tylenol suspension that you would give an older child. Also, a ban on prescription medicines that combine Tylenol with a narcotic for adults, like Percocet and Vicodin, might include those for children too. Of course you could still give the medicines separately, as a dose of hydrocodone and a dose of Tylenol, but since kids usually don't like to take medicine, that might be easier said than done.

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