2023-11-03 08:07:00
Is that gum a vitamin or a candy? This can be difficult to know, especially for children.
Since 2019, there has been a significant increase in the number of children under the age of 4 who have been taken to emergency rooms due to taking gummy multivitamins and over-the-counter sleep aids, such as melatonin.
For this reason, the US Food and Drug Administration held a meeting of experts on Monday to discuss the reasons why the drug “looks like candy,” according to what was published by the website. NBC News.
“I’ve heard of cases where babysitters didn’t know what gum was or what medications were!” says Dr. Suzanne Doyon, medical director of the Connecticut Poison Control Center and assistant professor of emergency medicine at UConn Health.
“Making over-the-counter medications more attractive to children is not inherently a bad thing,” she added during the FDA meeting. “Many children’s medications don’t taste good, so drug makers have modified their products to improve the flavor so that children can take them.”
However, some of these products may become so attractive that children may be at risk of eating them as if they were candy, not drugs.
“Kids will get into anything, and kids especially will get into anything that tastes like or looks like candy,” said Dr. Theresa Michel, head of the FDA’s Office of Nonprescription Drugs.
But Rachel Myers, a specialist in pediatric pharmacy and a professor at Rutgers University (New Jersey), warned against medicines that taste so good that children end up taking too much of them.
“We need to get rid of the idea that it has to be super delicious to eat,” she said.
Jeffrey Worthington, president of Senopsys, a company that works with pharmaceutical companies to make their products easier to consume, recommended removing added colors and avoiding cartoon characters or distinctive shapes.
“I think there are a lot of things I can point out in gum that I would rather not see in a pharmaceutical product…things like rings, worms, cartoon characters, and a lot of iconography that goes with gum and other supplements,” he explained.
Others at the meeting recommended that packaging and labels include engraving, or that pills be individually wrapped to prevent overdose.
But the meeting did not include a vote, and the FDA did not say whether there would be further discussions.
For his part, Dr. Christopher Hoyt, medical director of the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center, suggested a straightforward definition of candy-like drugs, noting that “it is reasonable for a person to look at it and have difficulty distinguishing between the two.”
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