Adults aren’t the only ones at risk of overdose or even death from powerful opioid painkillers.
Adults and teens aren’t the only ones at risk for drug overdose. Three children died recently and another suffered life-threatening hyperventilation after taking codeine. Because of their small sizes (the children were all between the ages of 2 and 5), the drug was broken down in their bodies very quickly, which officials believe led to a morphine overdose.
Before you dismiss this as something that wouldn’t happen to your child, you should know that this wasn’t an instance of children getting into medication accidentally or due to a caretaker’s carelessness. Each of the children were administered a normal dose of codeine following surgical procedures. The opioid was given to the kids after they each had their tonsils or adenoids removed to treat sleep apnea.
Codeine is an ingredient in many prescription pain relievers and even some over-the-counter cough syrups, and it’s a common drug used for pain. Once ingested, it normally turns into morphine in the body. It’s given regularly in the US without incident, so what went wrong here?
The children in question are thought to have been what are known as ultra-rapid metabolizers. This means they had an undetected genetic condition that causess codeine to turn into morphine more quickly and completely than usual, causing a fatal overdose. The condition is relatively rare, occurring in only one to seven out of every 100 people. But the frequency could be as high as 28 per 100 people among certain groups, such as North Africans, Ethiopians and Saudi Arabians.
The incidents prompted to US health officials to issue a warning. The FDA only learned about the issue from articles in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2009 and the journal Pediatrics in 2012. The agency then said it was reviewing adverse event reports and other data to see if there were other similar cases.
In the meantime, the FDA reminded doctors to be aware of codeine risks for certain children and use the lowest dose for the shortest period of time possible. Parents should also observe children for signs of overdose, which can include unusual sleepiness, trouble waking up, confusion or difficult or noisy breathing.
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