Alternative remedies seen as risk to young

MELBOURNE, Dec. 23 (UPI) -- Alternative remedies can have dangerous, and perhaps fatal, side effects, especially for vulnerable groups like children, Australian health experts say.

Researchers say parents sometimes think alternative treatments are "more natural" with fewer side effects than conventional drugs, but children given alternative remedies can have adverse reactions, a study published in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood said.

In nearly two-thirds of 39 cases in a study of incidents involving children and alternate remedies by the Australian Pediatric Surveillance Unit between 2001 and 2003, the side effects were rated as severe, life threatening or fatal.

The incidents involved children ranging from babies to 16-year-olds.

In 30 cases, the issues were "probably or definitely" related to complementary medicine, and in 17 cases the patients were considered to have been harmed by a failure to administer conventional medicines, the study said.

"Many of the adverse events associated with failure to use conventional medicine resulted from the family's belief in complementary and alternative medicine and determination to use it despite medical advice," the study authors from the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne said.

"Children don't make decisions themselves about their treatment; very often it is their parents, and parents can be misguided by the 50 million alternative medicine websites," says Edzard Ernst, Professor of Complementary Medicine at Exeter University in the United Kingdom.