Prescription of unlicensed and off-label drugs to children is common, carrying a high risk of adverse drug reactions.
Dr Lolkje de Jong-van den Berg, and colleagues at the University of Groningen, Netherlands, Groningen, analyzed 68,019 prescriptions for 19,283 children aged from zero to 16 years.
Family doctors wrote 56,961 (83.7 percent) of the prescriptions, with the rest written by specialists.
Unlicensed drugs amounted to 16.6 percent (11,288) of the total prescriptions. Highest percentages of off label use were urological or sex hormones (mainly oral contraceptives; 85.9 percent), ophthalmological and otological drugs (79.4 percent), dermatological drugs (55.9 percent), and cardiovascular drugs (48.3 percent).
In the group with the highest number of prescriptions – respiratory drugs -16.1 percent of all prescriptions were used off label.
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