TOPLINE:

The Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition Adverse Event Reporting System (CAERS) revealed a 15.5-fold increase in serious food- and supplement-related adverse events among youth since 2004, including 152 deaths and 1388 hospitalizations.

METHODOLOGY:

• Analysis included 8814 adverse events reported between January 2004 and March 2024 in individuals younger than 18 years, with events classified as suspect (7950, 90.2%) or concomitant (864, 9.8%). Serious adverse events included anaphylaxis, bacterial contamination, toxicity, and choking.
• Researchers analyzed data from the CAERS, excluding reports prior to 2004 when mandatory industry reporting began.
• Data evaluation focused on cases resulting in death, hospitalization, or serious adverse events, with descriptive statistics and group analyses conducted using analysis of variance for normally distributed data and Wilcoxon rank sum for non-normally distributed data.

TAKEAWAY:

• Among the 8109 cases with sex information, men showed a higher likelihood of experiencing serious adverse events (51.7% men vs 48.3% women; P < .01), though no significant sex-based differences were found for hospitalization or death.
• Youth who died from adverse events were significantly younger than survivors, with median ages of 5 years (range, 1-17) and 7 years (range, 1.00-17.96), respectively (P = .03).
• Vitamin, mineral, protein, and unconventional diet products were most frequently associated with serious outcomes, accounting for 30.1% of serious adverse events, followed by baby food products (10.7%) and powdered formulas (10.1%).
• Choking incidents were reported in 151 cases, with 89 classified as serious adverse events, primarily linked to vitamin, mineral, protein, or unconventional diet products (31.8%) and baby food products (17.9%).

IN PRACTICE:

“Enhanced oversight, and clinician- and caregiver-facing warnings may be warranted for product categories repeatedly linked with adverse outcomes. One potential intervention to reduce food- and dietary product-related adverse events is improving food and diet product labeling as well as consumer education to help vulnerable consumers avoid triggering allergens and remain safe,” the authors of the study wrote.

SOURCE:

The study was led by Jeannie S. Huang, MD, MPH, Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego and University of California San Diego in La Jolla. It was published online in The Journal of Pediatrics.

LIMITATIONS:

CAERS relies on voluntary reporting from consumers and healthcare practitioners, which may result in both underreporting and reporting bias. The threshold for reporting varies by reporter, leading to inconsistency in event severity reporting. The absence of denominator data, such as total product usage rates, prevents estimation of incidence or comparative risk and limits generalizability. Additionally, crucial contextual information about exposure settings, timing, dosage, and concurrent conditions was often missing or unclear.

DISCLOSURES:

The authors reported having no relevant conflicts of interest. No funding was received for this study.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.