The rise in exposure to prescription products has been so striking that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has established the PROTECT Initiative, intended to prevent unintended medication overdoses in children. According to the CDC, more than 70,000 emergency visits each year result from unintentional overdoses among children under the age of 18.

Dr. Randall Bond, an emergency medicine physician at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, presented his study on children and pharmaceutical poisonings at a recent PROTECT Initiative meeting in Atlanta. The study was published in September in the Journal of Pediatrics.

“The problem of pediatric medication poisoning is getting worse, not better,” says Dr. Bond, who also is medical director of the Drug and Poison Information Center at Cincinnati Children’s, in a news release. “More children are exposed, more are seen in emergency departments, more are admitted to hospitals, and more are harmed each year.”

Bond found that exposure to prescription products accounted for most of the emergency visits (55 percent), admissions (76 percent) and significant harm (71 percent). Levels of ingestion of opioids, most often prescribed to treat pain; sedatives-hypnotics, frequently prescribed as sleep aids; and cardiovascular medications were particularly high.

“Prevention efforts at home have been insufficient,” Bond said. “We need to improve storage devices and child-resistant closures and perhaps require mechanical barriers, such as blister packs. Our efforts can’t ignore society’s problem with opioid and sedative abuse or misuse.”

Bond studied patient records from 2001 to 2008 in the National Poison Data system – an electronic database of all calls to members of the American Association of Poison Control Centers. Bond studied children 5 years old and younger exposed to a potentially toxic dose of a single pharmaceutical agent, either prescription or over-the-counter. A total of 453,559 children were included in the study.

The largest part of increasing admissions, injuries and death was due to children finding and ingesting medication on their own. Therapeutic errors at home were uncommon and increased only minimally.

The most likely explanation for these trends is a rise in the number of medications around small children, he says. A 1998-99 survey found that half of adults had taken at least one prescription medication in the preceding week and 7 percent had taken five or more. In 2006, the same surveyors found that 55 percent had taken at least one prescription medication in the preceding week and 11 percent had taken five or more.

There are 57 poison control centers in the United States. Together they provide free, 24-hour poison expertise and treatment advice by phone. All poison centers can be reached by calling the same telephone number 1-800-222-1222. Poison centers are staffed by pharmacists, physicians, nurses and poison information providers who are toxicology specialists.

For more on child medical safety issues, see the library of articles by Daytona Beach child injury attorney.

The Limbs Alive project won a top award recently for its study of specially designed Wii games for cerebral palsy children. Researchers hope their result will spur more computer scientists to develop similar games.

The games are not as fast or as complex as traditional Wii games and requires players to use both controllers in both hands. That encourages improved coordination and muscle control in the child’s weaker hand as well.

In addition, children are more motivated to engage in their therapy if it takes the form of a Wii game.

The games tested in the study were customized to each child’s impairment after a complete interview and evaluation. They then took the Wii games home with them and used them there.

The next step for the Limbs Alive program is to conduct a random, double blind study to determine if these specially deseigned games improve function of the affected arm in children with hemiplegic cerebral palsy following neonatal stroke.

The two toddlers will travel the more than 6,000 miles to China to undergo treatments using stem-cells obtained from donated umbilical-cord blood.

The treatment is still experimental but the stakes are high. Without improvement, the toddlers will likely never walk or grasp objects.

President Barack Obama favors looser restrictions on stem-cell research and is currently moving in that direction. However, it will likely take years for American scientist to match the progress seen overseas and the children’s parents don’t want to wait that long.

Stem-cells posses the ability to become almost any type of cell, including nerve tissue cells. Embryonic stem-cells can become a wider range of cells than cord-blood stem-cells, but the hope is that the stem-cells introduced into the children will grow into new nerve tissue cells and will repair some of the damage that causes the children’s cerebral palsy.

Cerebral palsy generally occurs from damage to the brain in the womb or early infancy. It can affect coordination and muscle movement.

New studies show that cerebral palsy Botox treatments have serious side effects even up to three weeks after the treatment. If your child is experiencing difficulty breathing, difficulty swallowing, muscular weakness, drooping eyelids, constipation, aspiration pneumonia, speech disorder, facial drooping, or double vision, seek immediate emergency medical attention.

This new warning is an update to a 2008 safety review of cerebral palsy Botox treatments and will be included on the label and patient information packet going forward.

Although the FDA never approved Botox for cerebral palsy pediatric patients, it is a very commonly used and widely accepted treatment  across the country. Cerebral palsy Botox treatments involve the injection of large amounts of Botox deep into spastic muscles for the purpose of relaxing them.

The problem noted in the new study is that the Botox spreads well beyond the spastic muscles and has drastic side effects. The most serious side effects include hospitalizations involving ventilatory support and death.

The FDA also requests that all side effects be reported through MedWatch Every report helps the next child.