N-acetylcysteine to prevent multisystem organ failure

Excerpt

This randomized, double blind placebo control trial was well designed including power analysis of the study. From the results it seems that there may be a role for NAC in a subgroup of ICU patients, although from these results the only factor which appears to identify such patients is length of hospital stay. This difference seen on subgroup analysis between patients admitted to ICU either within or after 24 h of hospital admission highlights our poor fundamental understanding of sepsis and multi-organ failure and may suggest a difference in patient response to the inflammatory insult from a variety of diseases. On the basis of these results, the use of NAC outside of clinical trials is difficult to justify. …