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Study: Melatonin overdoses on the rise in children
Briona Arradondo reports
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - A new CDC study found melatonin overdoses in children skyrocketed over the last 10 years, and its use spiked during the pandemic.
Falling asleep does not come easy for some kids, so they need some help.
"Interestingly, I have been seeing more patients coming in for difficulty sleeping and the parent has already started melatonin," said Dr. Luis Ortiz, a sleep medicine physician at Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg.
Dr. Ortiz said the sleep aid melatonin is typically safe in the right dose for a certain amount of time, but a CDC study out Friday shows child overdoses are on the rise. Thousands of children were hospitalized.
"What was eye-opening for the CDC report was that when you're going beyond what is a normally prescribed dose, this can be lethal," said Ortiz. "And in a 10-year period, they had several children end up being hospitalized in the ICU and two infants even died."
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The CDC found "pediatric melatonin ingestion jumped 530 percent from 2012 to 2021," and the largest increase happened during the pandemic.
"We've definitely seen an increase in this with the COVID pandemic, with children being forced to be in home a lot," said Ortiz.
Most of the poisonings involved boys younger than five years old, and the overdoses were mainly accidents. The FDA-approved supplements can come as plain tablets or as gummies, which are most likely used by children.
"These gummy forms taste good. They just taste like your regular gummy bear or any kind of gummy type candy," said Ortiz. "When the child gets access to this substance, to this medication and takes 10 to 100 times higher doses than what would be recommended, that's when you can run into trouble."
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The bottles are not hard to open, so the CDC study also recommended manufacturers consider child-resistant packaging.
"So a lot of these containers are not child proofed, and they're very easy to obtain. I think that even simple interventions such as child proofing these containers can be helpful," said Ortiz.
Ortiz said good sleep routines should be the priority, but it’s okay if that’s not enough.
"I don't feel that there should be any shame in using melatonin. However, you need to have a game plan," he said.
Dr. Ortiz recommends working with a doctor to figure out the right dose and knowing when to stop, and he said to keep the melatonin in a safe place.
"Just like any other medication, the melatonin container should be kept out of reach and preferably not with a knowledge, not within the child's knowledge, like the kid should not know where the bottles are. So in case they get curious, they don't they don't go looking for it," he said.