FDA approves one in three kids' drugs

ANN ARBOR, Mich., April 15 (UPI) -- Many parents do not realize less than one-third of drugs are U.S. government approved for children, researchers said.

A study by the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health indicated 83 percent of parents believe the last medication prescribed for their child was U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved.

"FDA labeling is very important to parents, but that's a problem when only one-third of medicines have FDA approval for use in children," Dr. Matthew Davis, director of the National Poll on Children's Health said in a statement. "The solution to that is to either get more medicines that are FDA-approved by increasing clinical studies, or working to help physicians and parents negotiate the situation when physicians want to use medicines that are safe and effective, but may not have FDA approval."

Not all medicines that are FDA approved for adults are safe and effective for children to use -- the dose of medicine, how fast the medicine is processed in the body and side effects of the medicine can be different for children than for adults, Davis said.

The survey of 2,131 U.S. adults indicated that 94 percent of parents said it was the doctor's responsibility to tell them if their child's medicine is not FDA-approved.