ARS TECHNICA – Federal regulators have long decried drug-containing products that appeal to kids—like nicotine-containing e-cigarette products with fruity and dessert-themed flavors or edible cannabis products sold to look exactly like name-brand candies.
But a less-expected candy-like product is sending thousands of kids to emergency departments in the US in recent years: melatonin, particularly in gummy form.
According to a new report from researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, use of the over-the-counter sleep-aid supplement has skyrocketed in recent years—and so have calls to poison control centers and visits to emergency departments.
Melatonin, a neurohormone that regulates the sleep-wake cycle, has become very popular for self-managing conditions like sleep disorders and jet lag—even in children.
Use of melatonin in adults rose from 0.4 percent in 1999–2000 to 2.1 percent in 2017–2018.
But the more people have these tempting, often candy-like supplements in their homes, the more risk that children will get ahold of them unsupervised.
Indeed, the rise in use led to a 530 percent increase in poison control center calls and a 420 percent increase in emergency department visits for accidental melatonin ingestion in infants and kids between 2009 and 2020.
And the problem is ongoing. In the new study, researchers estimate that between 2019 and 2022, nearly 11,000 kids went to the emergency department after accidentally gulping down melatonin supplements.
Nearly all the cases involved a solid form of melatonin, with about 47 percent identified specifically as gummies and 49 percent listed as an unspecified sold form, likely to include gummies.
These melatonin-based emergency visits made up 7 percent of all emergency visits by infants and kids who ingested medications unsupervised …
