[Drug prescriptions for Danish children].
We used a prescription database to identify all reimbursed prescriptions for children aged 0-15 years living in North Jutland County (population 95,134), Denmark, during 1997. We identified 154,189 prescriptions for 48,091 child users. The mean prescription rate was 1621/1000 children/year. Overall, half of the child population purchased > or = 1 prescription. In children younger than three years, 75.3% purchased prescriptions, and 17.5% received > or = 5 prescriptions. Systemic antibiotics, anti-asthmatics, ophthalmologicals, and dermatological corticosteroids accounted for 82% of the prescriptions. One-third of the 0-2 year old children purchased prescriptions for anti-asthmatics, mainly systemic beta 2-agonists, and almost half purchased antibiotics, mainly broad-spectrum penicillins. In the 7-15 year olds, 39.1% redeemed at least one prescription. The study stresses the need for epidemiological studies on the reasons for drug use and evaluation of pharmacological effects in children.
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Aarhus Universitet, Center for Epidemiologisk Grundforskning. nt@soci.au.dk
Sørensen
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D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D016208:Databases, Factual; D003718:Denmark; D011307:Drug Prescriptions / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D004363:Drug Utilization; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D012042:Registries