(HealthDay News) – Adding flow restrictors to bottles limits the ability of young children to access liquid medicine, according to a study published online July 25 in the The Journal of Pediatrics.
Maribeth C. Lovegrove, MPH, of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and colleagues conducted a block randomized trial using a convenience sample of 110 children aged 3–4 years. The children were asked to remove the test liquid from bottles that had a flow restrictor (uncapped) or control bottles (uncapped or incompletely closed cap).
The researchers found that the liquid was emptied from 96% (25 of 26) of the uncapped bottles and 82% (68 of 83) of the incompletely closed bottles within two minutes. During the 10-minute test period, 6% (7 of 110) of the bottles with flow restrictors were emptied; none were emptied within the first six minutes. At least 25mL of liquid was removed from bottles that were uncapped, incompletely closed, and uncapped but fitted with flow restrictors by 100%, 90%, and 11% of children, respectively.
“Our findings suggest that adding flow restrictors to liquid medicine bottles limits the accessibility of their contents to young children and could complement the safety provided by current child-resistant packaging,” the authors write.
Several pharmaceutical and packaging manufacturing companies provided materials for evaluation in this study.
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