Pediatric exposures to synthetic THC increased by 132% in 2 years
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Key takeaways:
- The rate of exposure to synthetic THC increased by around 89% overall during a recent 2-year period.
- The increase was higher among children and older adults.
The rate of exposure to synthetic THC among children in the United States increased by 132% during a recent 2-year period, according to data from the American Association of Poison Control Centers published in Clinical Toxicology.
The overall increase in exposures between the beginning of 2021 and the end of 2022 was around 89% among children and adults. Older adults — those aged older than 59 years — experienced a similar increase as children, around 133% whereas the increase was smaller (49%) among adults aged 20 to 59 years.
Past research has shown that edible cannabis exposures have increased rapidly among young children since the late 2010s, and about 11% of high school seniors in the U.S. reported use of delta-8 THC, which is not approved by the FDA for any safe use.
Poisonings from THC products — including THC analogs such as those containing delta-8, delta-10 and THC-O-acetate — affect care at hospitals on a near-daily basis, according to one of the authors of the new study.
“Over the last several years in the U.S., exposures have increased to a degree where we are seeing children poisoned by THC analogues like delta-8 every day,” Hannah L. Hays, MD, medical director of the Central Ohio Poison Center and chief of toxicology at the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, told Healio.
Hays and colleagues conducted a retrospective analysis of 5,022 reported cases of exposure to synthetic THC products as the primary substance, such as those containing delta-8, delta-10 and THC-O-acetate, between Jan. 1, 2021, and Dec. 31, 2022, using the National Poison Data System.
“We took a look at the characteristics of those cases that were reported to poison centers,” Hays said.
According to the data, the rate of exposure to synthetic THC per 100,000 people in the U.S. population increased by 89.1%, from 0.55 in 2021 to 1.04 in 2022. Almost one-third of exposures occurred among children aged younger than 6 years, and 24.6% were among kids aged 6 to 19 years. Most cases — 98.1% — involved delta-8.
“The percent increase in exposure rates was somewhat surprising,” Hays said. “However, the dramatic increase in exposures is very similar to what we have seen with delta-9 edible exposures in young children.”
The most common reason for exposure was accidental, unintentional ingestion (40.2%), followed by abuse (33.1%). Altogether, 95.9% of exposures occurred in a residence.
Among the most common related clinical effects were mild central nervous system depression, occurring in 25% of the cases; tachycardia (23%); and agitation (15.6%). Of the cases, 38.4% experienced a serious medical outcome, 10.3% were admitted to a noncritical care unit and 5.3% to a critical care unit.
Hays said it is important for parents and providers to be educated about the potential dangers of these products and ways to prevent exposures.
“I have never seen a parent who wants their child to be poisoned by these products, even if they use it themselves,” Hays said. “They just are not aware that they can cause such serious injury in small children.”
Hays recommends that parents keep the products stored “up, away, out of sight and out of reach of children, preferably in a locked container.”
“I also recommend that parents and caregivers don’t consume these products in front of children, due to the tendency for children to mimic what parents do,” Hays said. “I make the same recommendations for vaping nicotine as I do cannabis, because I have cared for small children who were poisoned because they vaped these substances.”
Next for Hays and her colleagues will be to examine the potential impact of various educational and poisoning prevention campaigns, as well as reviewing what interventions are most likely to decrease pediatric poisoning of these products.
“I’d also like to see an increased understanding of the severity of clinical effects from THC-O-acetate exposures,” Hays said. “We think that the THC-O-acetate is more potent than other THC analogs, but the numbers in our study were pretty small, because this was a pretty new THC analog. So, a larger study looking at the clinical effects and the outcomes of that particular analog would be of interest to me.”
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