Melatonin overdoses among kids are up 530%, new research finds 📝: jeffreykluger
published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report . Accidental poisonings with melatonin among people 19 and under increased a staggering 530% from January 2012 to December 2021, with the biggest leaps occurring in 2020 and 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The research, led by Dr. Karima Lelak, a pediatrician at the Children’s Hospital of Michigan, relied on reports made over the past decade to the American Association of Poison Control Centers’ National Poison Data System. During that period, the investigators found, 260,435 cases of pediatric melatonin poisoning were reported; in 2012, there were 8,337 such incidents, representing 0.6% of all reports. By 2021 the number had leapt to 52,563, representing 4.
Nearly 84% of all of those incidents occurred in children 5 or under, and more than 94% of the total cases were considered accidental, with children finding and consuming the medication on their own. That kind of accidental poisoning is especially likely with melatonin since, while the product is sold in tablet, capsule and liquid form, it is also sold as sweet-flavored gummies—making it especially appealing to kids.
The pandemic has been an obvious driver of the problem. For one thing, children have spent more time at home—especially during 2020—creating greater opportunity for them to stumble upon and ingest melatonin. Adults also reported, increasing sales of melatonin. “This pandemic-related increase in accessibility and availability might have contributed to increased exposures in children,” the researchers write.
The majority of the hospitalized patients were teenagers who had ingested the melatonin intentionally. Whether they overdosed accidentally or were attempting to self-poison—a
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