BMJ 2002;324:1312-1313 ( 1 June )

Primary care

Unlicensed and off label drug use by children in the community: cross sectional study

Editorial by Banner and pp 1311, 1313

Eric Schirm, research pharmacist, Hilde Tobi, assistant professor, Lolkje T W de Jong-van den Berg, professor. 

Department of Social Pharmacy, Pharmacotherapy and Pharmacoepidemiology, Groningen University Institute for Drug Exploration, University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands

Correspondence to: L T W de Jong- van den Berg l.t.w.de.jong-van.den.berg@farm.rug.nl

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Studies in various hospital settings showed that many drugs taken by children either are not licensed or are used outside the terms of the product licence.1-3 Information on the extent of paediatric labelling of drugs taken by children in the community is, however, limited and based on small study populations. 4 5 We studied drugs taken by children in the community, based on the pharmacy records of prescriptions from both general practitioners and outpatient departments. We aimed to determine the number of prescriptions for unlicensed drugs for children in the community and to investigate paediatric labelling of all drugs with a product licence to determine the extent of off label use.


    Participants, methods, and results

In the Netherlands people commonly register with one pharmacy, from which they obtain their drugs, including those prescribed as outpatients. Excluded are drugs used during hospital stays and those bought over the counter. We obtained our data on dispensing from the . . . [Full text of this article]
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