Compound analgesic
analgesics with multiple ingredients
Compound analgesics are those with multiple active ingredients; they include many of the stronger prescription analgesics.
Active ingredients that have been commonly used in compound analgesics include:
aspirin or ibuprofen
caffeine
codeine or oxycodone
paracetamol (acetaminophen)
phenacetin
There is evidence that a compound of two analgesics with different mechanism of action can have an increased painkilling effect over the sum of the effect of each individual analgesic.
Several such formulations have disappeared from over-the-counter status in drug store aisles and other retail outlets. One example is APC (aspirin, phenacetin, and caffeine) compound tablets common from the 1940s to 1983; because of harmful side effects of phenacetin, Anacin in the U.S. was reformulated to eliminate it; while Vincent's APC is no longer sold. Some others have been judged to contribute too often to substance abuse.
Lenoltec is a compound analgesic that comes in four strengths:
Another example is Bex, a once popular Australian compound analgesic which is no longer sold. It contained 42% aspirin, 42% phenacetin, plus caffeine.
The United States Food and Drug Administration also now requires that manufacturers of compound analgesics unequivocally state each ingredient's purpose.
References
External links
APC definition and brief history.
“Compound analgesic” enters the record as analgesics with multiple ingredients. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Compound, analgesic and analgesics can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 11, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5156833. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1983.
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This entry incorporates text from “Compound analgesic” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.