Prescription drug poisonings in children continue to rise

Tips to keep kids safe

• Keep harmful products locked up and out of your child's sight and reach.
• Use safety latches or locks on drawers and cabinets where you keep dangerous items.
• Take extra care during stressful times.
• Call medicine by its correct name. You do not want to confuse the child by calling medicine candy.
• Always replace the safety caps immediately after use.
• Never leave alcohol within a child's reach.
• Seek help if your child swallows a substance that is not food. Call the Poison Help Line at 800-222-1222 or your doctor. Don't make your child vomit.
• Keep products in their original containers. Never put nonfood products in food or drink containers.
• Read labels with care before using any product.
• Teach children not to drink or eat anything unless it is given by an adult.
• Do not take medicine in front of small children. Children tend to copy adult behavior.
• Check your home often for old medications and get rid of them by flushing them down the toilet.
• Get rid of substances used for old-fashioned treatments such as ammoniated mercury, boric acid, camphorated oil, oil of turpentine and oil of wintergreen.
• There is more of a danger of poisoning when you are away from home, especially at a grandparent's home.

Source: American Academy of Pediatrics

Accidental poisoning of kids by prescription drugs is up.

That little fact may not come as a surprise to many, but this might: Increased prescription drug use by parents and other adults is what’s driving the uptick, a new study shows.

The study, “Adult Prescription Drug Use and Pediatric Medication Exposures and Poisonings,” published online Monday on the American Academy of Pediatrics website, found poisonings in children were strongly correlated with increased use of medications — including diabetes drugs, statins and other lipid-lowering medications, beta-blockers, and opioids — among adults.

“It’s a very concerning public health problem,” said Dr. Lindsey Burghardt, an instructor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and co-author of the study.

“In our study, there were high rates of serious injury related to exposures often leading to emergency room visits and hospital admissions,” Burghardt said. Between 2000 and 2009, for instance, more than 60 percent of children who were exposed or poisoned by medications used to treat diabetes went to an emergency room for evaluation. Of those, about half were subsequently hospitalized.

After a brief decline in the 1990s, the number of medication exposures and poisonings is again increasing among children. Between 2001 and 2008, for instance, pediatric emergency room visits because of medication poisoning increased 30 percent while hospitalizations increased 36 percent.

At the same time, the study noted, adult prescription use increased.

None of this surprises Dr. Robert Geller, a pediatrics professor at the Emory University School of Medicine and medical director of the Georgia Poison Center.

“We know that for the average young child, the more opportunity they have to get into things, the greater the likelihood that they will,” Geller said. “It’s simply mathematics.”

He said the Georgia center receives some 50,000 calls a year involving children and medication or household products. Nationally, there are more than 2 million calls a year.

Parents calling the poison center can get free, confidential medical advice at any time night or day and potentially avoid the need for an emergency department visit.

“About 80 percent of the time, we’re able to give them a series of steps they can manage at home and avoid unnecessary emergency room visits,” Geller said. “The remaining 20 percent do require assessment and sometimes intervention.”

Geller said he’s hopeful a new set of containers will soon hit the market that will make it harder for young children to get into medications and help reduce the number of poisonings.

“They are available now for some liquid medications and require the use of a syringe once the container is opened,” he said.

Burghardt said the increased availability of prescription drugs requires “us to rethink and reframe our approach to protecting children.”

To make policies around prevention more effective, she said specific age groups and medications must be targeted.

“The policies and measures that come next need to take into account the different behaviors that are leading up to these poisonings,” she said. “For example, a 2-year-old who finds a pill on the floor and puts it in her mouth has a very different reason for the poisoning than a teenager who finds and abuses an opioid prescribed for her parent.”

In addition, Burghardt said that there is growing awareness of the increasing use and abuse of opioids among both teens and adults.

“Our study suggests another downstream effect of increasing opioid use: the unintended exposures of children under age 5,” she said. “These children are most commonly affected by opioid poisonings even though they are not the intended recipients of these drugs. Providers prescribing opioids and other medications should counsel patients on safe storage of these medications.”