The number of young children in the US who have died from opioid overdoses has risen significantly, according to a new study of accidental poisonings of children five years of age and younger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The study, published Wednesday in the journal Pediatrics, analyzed a national database and found 731 children under the age of five among poisoning-related deaths between 2005 and 2018. Some of the children were poisoned by over-the-counter medicines for pain, cold and allergy, but the highest number of fatal poisonings were due to opioids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The trend worsened over time. In 2005, opioids accounted for 24.1% (7 of 29) of the substances that contributed to child deaths, compared to 52.2% (24 of 46) in 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“It’s really surprising to see, looking at these data, how different the ratios were between 2005 and 2018,” said study co-author Dr. Christopher Gaw, an associate fellow at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia whose research focuses primarily on pediatric injuries and poisoning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The number of fatal poisonings in this age group had declined since the Poison Prevention Container Act was passed in 1970, when child-resistant containers that were more difficult to open became the norm for many medications, as other studies have shown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The number of young children in the US who have died from opioid overdoses has risen significantly, according to a new study of accidental poisonings of children five years of age and younger. The study, published Wednesday in the journal Pediatrics, analyzed a national database and found 731 children under the age of five among […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5892,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[220],"tags":[1882,1881,1554,1880,1309],"class_list":["post-5891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-5-years","tag-children","tag-deaths","tag-opioid-use","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5891"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5893,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5891\/revisions\/5893"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}