Over half a million children each year are the reactions of the United States or bad side effects from drugs that are widely used, requiring medical treatment and sometimes hospitalization, demonstrates a new search.
Children aged under 5 years are most frequently affected. Penicillin and other antibiotics are among the prescription drugs cause the most problems, including rashes, stomach pains and diarrhea.
Parents should pay special attention when their children have been started medicines as “the first drug exposure time can reveal an allergic reaction,” said lead author Dr. Florence Bourgeois, a pediatrician with the Children’s Hospital Boston .
Doctors also need to inform parents about the possible symptoms of a new drug, he said.
The study appears in the October Pediatrics, published Monday.
It is based on national statistics on the survey of patients’ clinics and emergency rooms between 1995 and 2005. The number of children treated each year for the reactions hurt mostly stable during that period, an average of 585,922.
Bourgeois said there were no deaths resulting from bad reactions to medicines in the data studied, but 5 percent of children are sick enough to require hospitalization.
The study involved reactions to prescribed medications, including accidental overdoses. They have been used for a wide range of ailments including ear infections, sore throat, depression and cancer. Among adolescents, commonly used medications with unpleasant side-effects including birth control pills. Bad reactions to these pills including menstrual problems, nausea and vomiting.
Children under 5 accounted for 43 percent of clinic visits and emergency room, followed by boys aged 15 to 18, which constituted about 23 percent of the visits.
ame number of hospitalized children – approximately 540,000 every year – also have bad reactions to drugs, including side effects, medicine mix-ups and accidental overdoses, government research suggests.
The new report indicates that children at home are just as vulnerable.
Michael Cohen, president of the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, said a common problem involves giving young children liquid medicine. Doses can come in drops, teaspoons and milliliters, and parents may mistakenly think that these figures are interchangeable.
Cohen said doctors should be clear about the doses and parents should be sure before leaving the pharmacy that they understand exactly how to give liquid medicine.
The study was funded by the National Library of Medicine and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
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