Adverse Psychiatric Reactions Information Link
Promoting awareness of medicines that can harm mental health

Children or Foetal harm by medicines

A UK study of Adverse Drug Reactions in Children know as the ADRIC study

ADRIC: Adverse Drug Reactions In Children –a programme of research using mixed methods

click the title above to access the pdf of the findings.

briefly from the above document is the following:

The most surprising findings were from the study of ADRs in hospital. First, we found that the incidence of ADRs in children is much greater than in adults. We included probable and definite ADRs, which gave an incidence of 17.7%; a comparable study, published by our group in adults,59 reported an incidence of 14.7% but this included ADRs classified as definite, probable or possible.

If we included possible ADRs in our numerator, the comparable figure is that > 25% children in hospital experience an ADR.

We also observed that the risk of experiencing an ADR was increased over six times in children who had a general anaesthetic during their admission and over half of the drugs implicated in all ADRs were used either perianaesthetic or post anaesthetic.

These drug groups have been under-represented in previous studies and our findings have important implications for all clinicians concerned with the perioperative and postoperative management of children, in particular in view of the recent moves to ambulatory surgery in the UK and elsewhere.

A systematic review of the ADRIC study is available free at PLOS One

 

Drugs know to effect the foetus include

Alcohol effects on foetus

                                        Foetal alcohol syndrome

                                          Controversy over the effects of SSRI antidepressants

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