Sleepless in Childhood

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- It's no secret kids sometimes have trouble sleeping. But if you assume sleep aides are just something used by adults who can't catch enough zzzzz's, think again.

According researchers from The Ohio State University in Columbus, when parents ask for a little pharmaceutical help for their night owls, they usually get it. The problem; the U.S. Food and Drug Administration hasn't approved many sleep aides being prescribed for use in children.

"According to our study, 81 percent of visits among children with sleep difficulties resulted in a prescription for a medication," study author Milap C. Nahata, Ph.D., was quoted as saying. "Many of these medications were frequently used to treat children with sleep difficulties in outpatient settings despite lack of FDA approved labeling to assure their effectiveness and safety in this population."

The research is based on data from a large national health survey conducted between 1993 and 2004. During that time, more than 18 million visits to the doctor were made for sleep problems in kids, with the highest number of visits occurring among those ages 6 to 12. About a third of the kids who received a sleep prescription were given antihistamines, like hydroxyzine (Atarax), while another 26 percent were prescribed alpha-2 agonists, like clonidine (Catapres) or guanfacin (Tenex).

The authors of the study write more research is needed to find out why doctors are prescribing so many of these medications to children and to develop strategies to minimize the use of unapproved drugs in kids.

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SOURCE: SLEEP, 2007;30:1009-1013