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Having parented a toddler, I can understand the impulse. But you don't do it.
7% of emergency department visits were for kids that took melatonin?
What kind of bull is this?
(Bad reporting or proofreading, 7% of pediatric ingestions)
"During 2012–2021, a total of 260,435 pediatric melatonin ingestions were reported to poison control centers, representing 2.25% of all pediatric ingestions reported during the same period. The majority of ingestions were unintentional (94.3%), involved males aged ≤5 years, occurred in the home (99.0%), and were managed on-site (88.3%) (Table). Most children start (84.4%) were asymptomatic. Among those with reported symptoms, most involved the gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, or central nervous systems. Among 27,795 patients who received care at a health care facility, 19,892 (71.6%) were discharged, 4,097 (14.7%) were hospitalized, and 287 (1.0%) required intensive care. Among all melatonin ingestions, 4,555 (1.6%) resulted in more serious outcomes. Five children required mechanical ventilation, and two died. Both deaths occurred in children aged <2 years (3 months and 13 months) and occurred in the home. One ingestion involved intentional medication misuse; the reason for the other is unknown."
From the paper they link? But IDK where that 7% came from? 2.25% of pediatric ingestions.
Yeah, that seems strangely high. I feel like we'd hear about this much more frequently if it was that common.
So I wondered what the charges were and the penalties for giving OTC medication to minors without parental consent. It appears that the FDA considers melatonin a food supplement, not a drug. (Disclaimer, this is from 5 minutes searching online, I have no real knowledge beyond that). After reading the article, and lacking any other information, it seems like the investigation was spurred by the melatonin dosing, but the illegal part was operating an unlicensed daycare with more than 3 children in a private home. (Again, I'm very uninformed and guessing/extrapolating)
I'm actually not sure if it's illegal to give melatonin to minors without guardian consent. Unethical certainly, but if it's not a controlled substance or medication regulated by the FDA like OTC meds, is it illegal? There a some state laws prohibiting some supplements being given to minors. For example, NY has outlawed sales of dietary supplements to minors. If the supplement can be proved to harm a child, that's clearly illegal. It looks like there's not enough research to prove that's the case with melatonin though.
If anyone has a better understanding of these things, I'd love to hear it. I'm really curious about this now
I get wanting to calm down the kids to make your job easier, but have you considered just gagging them and duct-taping them to a chair?
/s obv
Daycare is such a roll of the dice if you get some of the best caretakers in the world or some type of scumbag watching your kids.
I know we shouldn't judge based on looks, but if all the adults at the daycare look like meth heads... Maaaaaybe pick a different daycare.
7% of all children hospital visits were for melatonin ingestion? That's surprisingly high. But I guess real childrearing problems have been mostly done away with so you get weird visits like that when you do.
It's worth considering that a lot of melatonin is sold as gummies. They're tasty. Little kids finds candy (gummies) and eats a whole bottle. Uh oh.
I'm sure there is a non-dangerous, or at least not life threatening, dose for most kids. I'd be surprised if one gummy sent a 10yo or similar aged kid to an ER without other extenuating circumstances.
The article said 7% of all emergency visits (with no qualifier). You said 7% of visits by children which sounds more reasonable. The actual statistic is even more specific than that.
During 2019–2022, melatonin was implicated in 7% of all ED visits for unsupervised medication exposures by infants and young children.
- https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/wr/pdfs/mm7309a5-H.pdf
The article links a summary of the wrong CDC report (June 2022) that does not contain this stat. The report that this stat comes from (quoted above) was published in March 2024 by a completely different group of researchers.
And why did the article say the statistic was for 2012-2021 when the quote statistic refers to the period 2019-2022? Because they've conflated another statistic from the same report:
The prevalence of melatonin use by U.S. adults quintupled from 0.4% during 1999–2000 to 2.1% during 2017–2018 (1). This rise coincided with a 530% increase in poison center calls for pediatric melatonin exposures during 2012–2021 and a 420% increase in emergency department (ED) visits for unsupervised melatonin ingestion by infants and young children during 2009–2020 (2,3).
It took me about 10 seconds to find the report and verify the stat. It was the first link returned in the search results.
Journalism really is dead.
Manchester, NH and abuse of OTC meds, yeah, that tracks.
Who let the local trailer park run a day care?