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More Youths Prescribed Medicine For Obesity's Effects

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The New York Times

Published: July 26, 2008

A growing number of American children are taking drugs for a wide range of chronic conditions related to childhood obesity, according to prescription data from three large organizations.

The numbers, from pharmacy plans Medco Health Solutions, Express Scripts and the marketing data collection company Verispan, indicate that hundreds of thousands of children are taking medication to treat Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and acid reflux - all problems linked to obesity that were practically unheard of in children two decades ago.

The data were either disclosed publicly in recent months or provided at the request of The New York Times.

They show that concerns that children will be taking adult medications - heightened recently by a controversial recommendation by a national pediatricians group - are already a reality.

This month, the American Academy of Pediatrics said that more children, as young as 8, should be given cholesterol-lowering drugs. The recommendation was quickly attacked by some experts as a license to put children on grown-up drugs.

While the drugs do help treat the conditions, some doctors fear they are simply a shortcut fix for a problem better addressed by exercise and diet.
Express Scripts and Medco developed estimates of how many children might be taking such medications for obesity-related conditions by extrapolating their own data - involving a total of more than 4 million children - across the broader population.

The companies use different assumptions to reach their estimates, but the data suggest that at least several hundred thousand children are on various obesity-related medications. The greatest increase occurred in medications for Type 2 diabetes, with Medco's data showing a 151 percent jump from 2001 to 2007.

Medco's data, released in May, showed that usage of drugs to treat acid reflux problems in children, often aggravated by obesity, increased 137 percent over seven years.

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