The liver is the most significant gland of the human body. This organ works hard to flush out all the toxins from your body and also produces important substances and bile to keep the body fit and fine with the consumption of food that one takes in. All these functions are essential for your body, and you can even die if your liver stops functioning for just a day.

Therefore, it is clear how important this organ is for your health. But it is equally true that the liver is prone to damage. Over the counter medicines like vitamins, herbs, and high-powered drugs like steroids can harm your liver and make it susceptible to diseases or impair normal organ functioning. Such conditions are called liver induced infections.

What does your liver do for your body?

• The liver produces bile juice which helps in digesting the fat.
• The liver works as a sieve and separates the toxins from the blood and flushes them out. For example, the liver separates bilirubin or ammonia and residues of medicines and keeps your blood free of toxins. This organ also changes the harmful chemicals in harmless chemicals and secreted bile in the stool or sends them to your kidney to flush these in your urine.
• The liver produces proteins like albumin and other coagulating proteins, which are beneficial for the human body.

If the liver gets damaged to a great extent, a person may need a liver transplant. This fact is consistent for children and adults alike. Pediatric liver transplant has increased in the last few decades. Children of the age group 1 to 5 years and 11 years and older are the most significant section that gets liver transplant (30% in each group). Babies under one year have a second place with 22.4% cases of transplantation. Children of 6 to 14 years come third with 14.6% of cases of transplant operations.

Symptoms of liver damages due to medicines

The symptoms of drug-induced liver damage have identical symptoms of typical and conventional liver damage. For example, drug-induced hepatitis shows similar signs of typical hepatitis. So, doctors ask patients if they take any types of high power drugs or life-saving drugs and try to deduce if the patient is suffering from medicine induced disease.

Symptoms

Patients who are suffering from minimal to medium scale drug-induced liver disease may not experience any visible symptoms. But patients who suffer from severe impairment of the liver show the following signs-

• Fatigue
• Abdominal pain and cramps
• Anorexia or appetite loss
• Vomiting and nausea
• In the case of medicine induced jaundice, the bilirubin level in the blood goes up, and the body gets bilirubin build up. Yellow urine and yellowing of the eyes and nails are the main symptoms.
• Drug-induced liver diseases can also cause itching (elevated SGPT and SGOT level).
• If the blood clotting proteins produced by the liver decrease, then the affected person often gets bruises and cuts quickly.

In case of severe liver damage, liver surgery is essential. The doctors may operate the patient to separate the damaged part of a liver, or they might also recommend for transplant procedures. In case of severe damage:

• Edema- fluid gets stored in legs
• Ascites- the blood vessels and lymph nodes near the liver experience increasing pressure, and as a result, the abdomen becomes swollen.
• Increased ammonia build up in the liver can cause mental confusion or coma
• Gastrointestinal bleeding
• Kidney failure
• Bacterial infection

Which drugs cause liver damage

Some medicines which cause liver damage are-

• Antibiotics – Antibiotics are often used to treat infections. Since these medicines are used frequently, they are among the leading causes of liver damage.
• Acetaminophen – This is an OTC medicine (cream or oral medicine) that is used for pain relief. Overdose can cause toxic syndromes and liver damages.
• Anticonvulsants – This medicine treats epilepsy. It is a combination of phenytoin, valproate, carbamazepine, etc. An overdose of Anticonvulsants causes medium-scale liver damage.
• Antituberculosis medicine – Antituberculosis medicines can cause severe liver issues. These medicines affect the production of liver enzymes, and the enzymes often lose their effectiveness also. Overuse of these medicines can lead to severe liver damage. Especially in children, the issue is quite pronounced, thus needing pediatric liver transplantation.
• Statins – Statins are used to treat high cholesterol levels in the blood. These medicines can cause dis-balance in enzyme levels. But the damage is not permanent and usually reversed if the drugs are discontinued.

Some precautions

Here are some precautions that you can take to curb risks to the liver from drugs and medicines-

• Try to use drugs while necessary. Over-the-counter medication must be avoided at any cost.
• Try to read all the information about any medicines you or your child is taking. This step will check if these drugs can cause any type of liver issues.
• Consult your physician to know if any medicine (in general, or the ones consumed by your kid) can lead to liver problems.

Summary

Drug-induced liver diseases happen if medicines like OTC medicines, antibiotics, etc. are taken regularly without medical supervision. These medicines can damage the liver and affect the functions of the liver. Severe issues may lead to the need for liver transplantation. So, people need to be careful about using medicines.