ArticleDrug safety2021
Is There an Increased Risk of Hepatotoxicity with Metamizole? A Comparative Cohort Study in Incident Users.
Article in Drug safety, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 13 citations in OpenAlex.
- Metamizole: Indications and Risks.Deutsches Arzteblatt international · 2026Review
- Article
- Drug-Induced Liver Injury Caused by Metamizole: Identification of a Characteristic Injury Pattern.Liver international : official journal of the International Association for the Study of the Liver · 2025Observational
- Effects of Metamizole, 4-Methylaminoantipyrine, and 4-Aminoantipyrine on LX-2 Liver Cell Line Viability and Apoptosis.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Adverse effects of metamizole on heart, lung, liver, kidney, and stomach in rats.BMC pharmacology & toxicology · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionThe analgesic metamizole, which has been withdrawn from the market in several countries due to the risk of agranulocytosis but is still available on the market in Germany and some other countries, has been associated with liver injury in published case reports; however, epidemiological studies on the risk of liver injury are limited.
objectiveThe aim of this study was to compare the risk of liver injury up to 270 days after the first start of treatment with metamizole with the corresponding risk in patients starting treatment with paracetamol, using a retrospective cohort incident user design.
methodsThe first prescription for either metamizole or paracetamol in the Intercontinental Medical Statistics (IMS)
resultsMetamizole was associated with a higher risk of liver injury compared with paracetamol (adjusted hazard ratio 1.69, 95% confidence interval 1.46-1.97). Sensitivity analyses were performed to evaluate the robustness of these findings. In all the sensitivity analyses, metamizole was still associated with a higher risk of liver injury, including an analysis where naproxen was used as a comparator instead of paracetamol.
conclusionsResults from this study support previous studies suggesting that metamizole is associated with a significant risk of liver injury. Nevertheless, a possible impact of residual confounding cannot be excluded.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.