Over 7,600 children poisoned by prescription Adderall in 2021- up 300% in last two decades

• More than 3 million children are taking ADHD medications and the number of prescriptions is increasing
• Doctors say that as more drugs are prescribed, medication errors increase.
• Read more: Why America’s Adderall crisis is spiraling out of control

The explosion in prescriptions for ADHD medications has increased the number of children at risk of overdosing by 300 percent.

Approximately 1 in 20 children under the age of 19, or 3.3 million people, are prescribed medications to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

Researchers found that the large increase in the number of reports to addiction control authorities, from approximately 1,900 cases in 2000 to 7,600 cases in 2021, was due to an increase in new ADHD diagnoses and the subsequent large-scale introduction of treatment drugs. I guessed that.

Approximately 54 percent of poison center reports occur as a result of multiple accidental ingestions by children. However, about 13 percent of the reports involved children who took the wrong medication or accidentally took someone else’s medication.

Although there were no deaths and the majority of children did not need to go to the hospital as a result of these medication errors, just over 4% had serious medical outcomes such as seizures, tremors, and changes in mental health.

Almost two-thirds of the children who took the wrong dose or medication were between the ages of six and 12, and more than three-quarters were male.

However, children under 6 years of age were more likely to experience poor outcomes or be hospitalized.

“The increased number of medication errors reported is consistent with the findings of other studies that have reported an increase in ADHD diagnoses,” said study co-author Dr. Natalie Rein, director of the Central Ohio Poison Center at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. ” This may be related to the increased use of ADHD medications. ”

Pediatricians at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, collected information from the National Poison Data System (NPDS), which uses information from calls to poison control centers and data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The most commonly reported addictions occurred as a result of ADHD medications such as Adderall.

However, 23% of children mistakenly took a drug called guanfacine, which was used to treat high blood pressure and ADHD, or took the wrong dose of a self-prescribed drug. They were twice as likely to suffer serious health problems and more than five times as likely to need to go to the hospital.

Less than 15 percent of children accidentally took another drug called methylphenidate, which is used to treat ADHD and narcolepsy.

Fewer than 300 children had serious medical outcomes when taking methylphenidate, compared with 1,510 when taking ADHD stimulants and 1,521 when taking guanfacine.

Prescription rates for ADHD medications have steadily increased over the past two decades, but never as rapidly as during the coronavirus pandemic.

Prescription rates increased by just 1.4% annually from 2016 to 2020, according to tracking by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, in just one year from 2021 to 2022, the prescription rate skyrocketed to nearly 8%.

The increases in the years leading up to the pandemic were largest in the two age groups most likely to be parents of young children: 30-34 and 35-39.

Almost 93 percent of medication errors occurred at home, about 5.5 percent at school, and 1.6 percent in another location such as a public park or restaurant.

“ADHD medication errors are preventable, so we need to educate patients and caregivers and develop improved medication and tracking systems that are more tolerant to children,” said Gary Smith, Ph.D., director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. We need to pay more attention.” ‘

Dr Smith, who led the study, said: “Another strategy could be a move away from pill bottles to unit-dose packaging, such as blister packs, which can help people remember whether a drug has already been taken or administered. Maybe,” he added.