Beware! Painkillers may turn villains

Are you a habitual user of painkillers like aspirin and ibuprofen ?. Then beware! A new study has found serious risks with the painkillers as they may cause serious reproductive problems.

According to scientists from Denmark, Finland, and France, pregnant women who take painkiller drugs have a significantly higher risk of bearing baby boys with reproductive problems than pregnant women who do not. The new study has revealed that common painkillers like aspirin and ibuprofen cause hormone problems.

Published in the journal 'Human Reproduction', the study draws urgent attention to the serious dangers associated with painkiller drugs. Pregnant women who take any painkiller drugs during their second trimester double their risk of having a baby boy with cryptorchidism, a condition in which the boy's testicles do not properly descend due to inadequate testosterone production. And taking more than one painkiller drugs during the second trimester raises that risks by a whopping 1,600 percent.

"A single paracetamol tablet [500mg] contains more endocrine disruptor potency than the combined exposure to the 10 most prevalent of the currently known environmental endocrine disruptors during the whole pregnancy" explained Dr. Henrik Leffers, senior scientist at Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen and author of the study.

"In fact, a single tablet will, for most women, be at least a doubling of the exposure to the known endocrine disruptors during the pregnancy and that dose comes on a single day, not spread out over nine months as with the environmental endocrine disruptors. Thus, for women using mild analgesics during the pregnancy, the mild analgesics will be by far the largest exposure to endocrine disruptors."

Taking painkiller drugs is largely considered to have no significant risks associated with it, so millions of people pop them every time they have an ache or pain. And use of such painkillers is quite common among pregnant women as well.