Doctors in primary care struggle to prescribe the right doses of paracetamol for children, Scottish researchers warned today.
Many prescriptions give too much of the drug to young children – and not enough to older ones, according to Dr James McLay.
The conclusions come from a study of the care of more than 35,000 children aged between zero and 12 years. Some 4,423 prescriptions for paracetamol had been issued to 2,761 children.
Researchers found that about 25 per cent of children under the age of four had been given excessive doses of the drug. And the same proportion of children over the age of six were under-dosed, they said.
As many as 12 per cent of prescriptions did not include dosage instructions.
The research was conducted jointly by Aberdeen University and Edinburgh University, UK, and is reported in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology today.
Dr McLay said: "This is the first study to describe the patterns of paracetamol prescribing by primary care physicians in the community, and it is worrying to discover that just over half of the prescriptions failed to comply with current British National Formulary for Children recommendations."
He added: "Getting the dose right can become even more complicated when parents also give their children additional paracetamol that they have bought over the counter.
"We know from other studies that around half of parents do not understand official dosage recommendations for medicines such as paracetamol, and not taking care over dosing instructions can leave parents in a state of confusion, or strengthen the public perception that paracetamol is harmless."
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