Dosing Cups Are Causing Parents To Overdose Their Kids, Study Says

Because parents want what's best for their children, they can sometimes go overboard. This is especially true when it comes to giving medicines to their kids, according to a new study.

The study recently published in the journal Pediatrics suggests that parents, especially those with low health literacy, have the tendency to overdose their children. Researchers found that parents commit more errors when using dosing cups than oral syringes to measure the amount of medicine they will serve their kid.

CNN reports that the research observed 2,110 caregivers of children 8 years old and younger. They either spoke English or Spanish and most of them are mothers.

They were given a nutrition label to read, assess and compute the amount of medication they are to give the children. The results revealed that 77 percent of them had "low" or "marginal" health literacy.

They were then given labels and dosing materials and were asked to measure nine doses of medicine using the given tools. The tools had different measurement increments and from this, the researchers found out that 84.4 percent of the caregivers committed one or more dosage errors, moreso when they used cups rather than syringes.

According to CNN, researchers concluded that current packaging, labeling and dosing information are some of the factors that cause parents to unintentionally overdose their kids. Because these information are not standardized for all products, it becomes harder for a confused parent to measure medicine correctly for his/her kid.

Also, the dosage information sometimes uses a different unit of measurement from the parent's available dosing cup. The confusion starts when the parents convert the given unit into another that is inaccurately mismatched from the correct dosage. This is why the researchers are encouraging parents to use oral syringes rather than dosing cups, especially if the child takes liquid-based medicines.

As per Daily Mail, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration suggest that parents make use of dosing tools with standard measurements, such as oral syringes, droppers and dosing cups. Kitchen spoons are not advisable because they have different sizes and shapes.

There are severe cases of overdose. According to Healthgrade, the kid may experience vomiting, nausea, diarrhea, convulsions, enlargement of pupils, loss of coordination and slurred speech, yellow skin or eyes, abdominal pain, numbness, rapid heartbeat, extreme fatigue, etc.

If you think your kid has been overdosed, call the Poison Control Center at 800-222-1222. Sound off your thoughts in the comments section and follow Parent Herald for more news and updates.