Cancer drugs may help the liver recover from common painkiller overdoses
In mice given a toxic dose of acetaminophen, an anticancer medication kept liver cells alive
Experimental anticancer drugs may help protect against liver damage caused by acetaminophen overdoses.
In mice poisoned with the common painkiller, the drugs prevented liver cells from entering a sort of pre-death state known as senescence. The drugs also widened the treatment window: Mice need to get the drug doctors currently use to counteract an overdose within four hours or they will die, but the experimental drugs worked even 12 hours later, researchers report August 15 in Science Translational Medicine.