# Severe drug-induced liver injury due to self-administration of the veterinary anthelmintic medication fenbendazole

Source: https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-thakurdesai-fenbendazole-liver-injury-2024/  
OnCo record `paper-thakurdesai-fenbendazole-liver-injury-2024` (Key paper). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

The first biopsy-confirmed case of severe liver injury from a dog dewormer taken for cancer: a 67-year-old woman with two weeks of jaundice whose liver tests took three months to recover.

## Summary

Fenbendazole is approved for veterinary use only, and its human use appears to be increasing because social media popularises its potential anticancer effects (Thakurdesai case report 2024). The authors describe the first case of histologically confirmed severe drug-induced liver injury, hepatocellular pattern, in a 67-year-old woman who presented with two weeks of jaundice after self-administering fenbendazole; liver function tests normalised three months after she stopped (Thakurdesai case report 2024).

## Fields

- Kind: Key paper
- Last checked: 2026-09-24
- Journal: ACG Case Reports Journal
- Year: 2024
- DOI: 10.14309/crj.0000000000001354
- Authors: Thakurdesai A, Rivera-Matos L, Nagra N, Busch B, Mais DD, Cave MC.
- Findings: Histologically confirmed hepatocellular liver injury from self-administered fenbendazole; recovery over three months.
- What it means: Fenbendazole has never been tested for safety in people. This is what that absence means in practice.
- Caveats: Single case.

## Sources

- Thakurdesai case report 2024: https://doi.org/10.14309/crj.0000000000001354
- PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38706451/

## Connected records

- drugs: [Fenbendazole (veterinary anthelmintic)](https://onco.cc/drugs/fenbendazole/)
- terms: [Hepatotoxicity (liver enzyme elevation)](https://onco.cc/terms/hepatotoxicity/)
- bottlenecks: [Misinformation and unproven therapies](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-misinformation/)

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