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(Reuters Health) – A sizeable proportion of parents confessed to giving their children antibiotics that had been prescribed to someone else, according to the findings of an investigation by US researchers at the conference of the American Academy of Pediatrics in Orlando, Florida.
The practice promotes antibiotic resistance and the risk of children being exposed to dangerous doses, expired medicines containing degradatives and harmful allergens, told Reuters Health, Tamara Kahan, director of the Northwell Health study, in Lake Success, New York, by email.
"Physicians need to stress the importance of completing all antibiotic treatment so that there are no more residues, eliminate them, if necessary, and take the risk of sharing any type of medication with people. for whom it was not prescribed, "said Kahan.
Kahan and his colleagues recruited parents across the country via Amazon Mechanical Turk, an online crowdsourcing market. In the end, they evaluated the responses of 496 parents who met their inclusion criteria. Participants were 61% female and 69% white, with an average age of 34 years.
A total of 454 parents, or 92%, said they would have left antibiotics at home. More than a third of these parents (159, or 35%) said they had redistributed the remains to other people, including children and adults. The diversion of antibiotics, as it is called tactical, was more common with drops and liquids than with creams and pills.
Parents sometimes put other family members on the same dosage prescribed to the child who received the prescription. Or they have estimated a new dosage depending on the age of the family member.
16% of those surveyed said they gave their children adult medicines.
It is unclear to what extent this practice can be dangerous, whether for people or by promoting antibiotic resistance. These issues will be studied in the future, says Kahan.
"The study provides an interesting insight into a common problem of" unused "antibiotics, said Dr. Jordan Taylor, pediatric surgeon at Stanford University School of Medicine in California, who did not participate looking.
"The researchers found that liquid or solution medications were more frequently stored and diverted; medications in liquid or solution form are used almost exclusively in pediatric patients, as most can not swallow tablets. It would seem that providers or pharmacists need to teach more liquid medication handling techniques once the prescription is complete, "said Dr. Taylor.
The use of Mechanical Turk by researchers to recruit study participants is one of the limitations of the study. Dr. Taylor believes that a study of people recruited in this way might not generate findings that apply to the general public.
In addition, Taylor said, "It would have been interesting to ask interviewees why they kept the drugs or if they had discussed the possible use of additional drugs with their provider."
SOURCE: bit.ly/2SQD1bx American Academy of Pediatrics, November 5, 2018.
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