According to new research recently published in The Journal of Pediatrics, children are more and more at risk of accidental drug poisonings. In fact, accidental drug poisonings among children rose a whopping 22 percent between 2001 and 2008.

Why the increase? It may be simply the fact that both adults and children are using more prescription drugs. This makes access to poisonous pills very easy. Drug technology may also be to blame, such as sustained-release medications that can lead to more severe poisonings. Increased prescriptions by doctors also lead to more dangerous drugs that are present in homes, and the possibility of more medication errors.

Ohio researchers from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and the University of Cincinnati analyzed data from the national poison control center. The data was about reports of children ages five and younger who ended up in the emergency room because of medication poisoning.

In 96 percent of the cases, the child ingested the drugs by mistake. Some of the medication poisonings among children were a result of medication errors made by health care workers. Other poisonings were dosage errors by the person administering the drugs to the child.

Prescription drugs were found to be particularly dangerous in comparison to over-the-counter medications. While accounting for about half of all of the medication poisonings, prescription drug poisonings caused serious injuries in 75 percent of the cases, some of which were so severe the children were in intensive care.

Improved packaging could play a role in preventing childhood medication poisonings in the future. Designing packages that are more difficult for children to open and that limit the amount of drugs that are accessible upon each opening may help.

Medication poisonings are serious and can be life-threatening, even if only one dose of a drug is involved. This new research should put Ohio parents and caregivers on alert that prescription drug medications are particularly harmful for children and that drugs should be stored safely out of the reach of children.

Source: The New York Times, "More Accidental Drug Poisonings of Children," Tara Parker-Pope, Sept. 16, 2011