Maryland ? Government experts called for sweeping safety restrictions Tuesday on the most widely used painkiller, including reducing the maximum dose of Tylenol and eliminating prescription drugs such as Vicodin and Percocet.

The Food and Drug Administration assembled 37 experts to recommend ways to reduce deadly overdoses with acetaminophen, which is the leading cause of liver failure in the U.S. and sends 56,000 people to the emergency room annually. About 200 die each year.

“We’re here because there are inadvertent overdoses with this drug that are fatal and this is the one opportunity we have to do something that will have a big impact,” said Dr. Judith Kramer of Duke University Medical Center.

But over-the-counter cold medicines — such as Nyquil and Theraflu — that combine other drugs with acetaminophen can stay on the market, the panel said, rejecting a proposal to take them off store shelves.

The FDA is not required to follow the advice of its panels, though it usually does.