Paracetamol may be an effective pain reliever but it also reduces feelings of pleasure, a new study suggests.
The previously unknown side-effect means that over-the-counter painkillers are leaving users not only pain-free, but also emotionally numb.
In a study carried out by US researchers, volunteers who took paracetamol reported weaker feelings when they saw both pleasant and harrowing photographs.
“This means that using paracetamol might have broader consequences than previously thought,” said lead author Geoffrey Durso, a doctoral student in social psychology at The Ohio State University.
“Rather than just being a pain reliever, paracetamol can be seen as an all-purpose emotion reliever.”
Previous research had shown that the pain-killer works not only on physical pain, but also on psychological pain.
However the new study takes those results one step further by showing that it also reduces how much users actually feel positive emotions.
Dr Baldwin Way, assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State added: “Most people probably aren’t aware of how their emotions may be impacted when they take paracetamol.
“People who took acetaminophen didn’t feel the same highs or lows as did the people who took placebos.”
Researchers asked 82 volunteers to take 1000mg of paracetamol – the equivalent of two normal sized tablets – or a placebo.
After waiting 60 minutes for the drug to take effect, they were asked to rate 40 photographs on whether the image made them feel positive or negative.
The photographs ranged from the extremely unpleasant, such as crying, malnourished children, to neutral images, like a cow in a field, and very pleasant, such as children playing with kittens.
Results showed that participants who took acetaminophen rated all the photographs less extremely than did those who took the placebo.
(More details of the methodology and outcomes at the Ohio State University report.)
