Medicines for children: safety as an afterthought

摘要

On Sept 21, WHO released a long overdue and thorough report, Safety of medicines for children, that highlights the unacceptable state of monitoring medicine-related problems in children worldwide.Many issues make safety of paediatric medicines an extremely difficult area to study. Medicines are often used in an off-label or unlicensed way-ie, they have not been tested in a particular age group or are given using adult formulations. Tablets that are too big are crushed, and liquids that are too concentrated are diluted. There is very little information on how such reformulation affects bioavailability and there is an increased risk of overdosing