Abstract
We report a patient with glutathione synthetase (GS) deficiency who developed acetaminophen-induced hepatotoxicity after a two-day treatment with regular doses of acetaminophen. A nine-month-old female was referred because of intractable metabolic acidosis. She was given acetaminophen at therapeutic doses over a 48-hour period. She was hospitalized because of confusion and metabolic acidosis. Liver function tests were abnormal with normal bilirubin levels. The urine gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC/MS) showed massive excretion of 5-oxoproline. She improved and liver function tests normalized in the next six days, but compensated metabolic acidosis and massive 5-oxoprolinuria persisted. The analysis of GS in erythrocytes revealed 5% of normal enzyme activity, and the patient had 491G > A mutation on both alleles in the GS gene. In this report it can be assumed that patients, even if heterozygous for a mutation of the GS gene, are at risk for acetaminophen toxicity.
Copyright and license
Copyright © 2007 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.