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Melatonin: prescribing practices and adverse events

¹ Harper House Children’s Services, Radlett, Herts, UK
² Telford & Wrekin PCT, Longbow House, Harlescott Lane, Shrewsbury, UK
³ The Newcomen Centre, Guy’s Hospital, London, UK

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr P Gringras
The Newcomen Centre, Guy’s Hospital, London, UK; paul.gringras@gstt.nhs.uk

Keywords: melatonin; sleep; prescriptions

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

Melatonin is currently an unlicensed, "named patient only" medicine in the UK, although it is available as a dietary supplement in the United States and over the internet. It is used for a variety of sleep disorders in children who often have neurodevelopmental impairments.^1,2 There remains a dearth of robust randomised controlled trials to demonstrate its efficacy, while lack of pharmacokinetic, pharmacodynamics, and toxicology data limits knowledge of therapeutic dose ranges, formulations, and adverse effects.

We carried out an anonymous questionnaire survey to examine prescribing practices of members of the British Association for Community Child Health (BACCH) and the British Academy of Childhood Disability (BACD) (see ADCwebsite: http://www.archdischild.com/supplemental).

From a newsletter circulation reaching an estimated 926 paediatricians, responses to the questionnaire were received from 148 (about 15%) (table 1).

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