Dosage Form Data Used for Estimating Pediatric Antibiotic Use.

Area of Science:

• Pharmacology and Pharmaceutics
• Public Health
• Pediatrics

Background:

• Accurate quantification of pediatric antibiotic exposure is crucial for public health surveillance.
• Existing methods for large datasets often lack age stratification, limiting pediatric-specific analysis.
• Understanding pediatric antibiotic use patterns is essential for combating antimicrobial resistance.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a simple estimation method for quantifying pediatric antibiotic exposure in large datasets.
• To quantify and benchmark antibiotic use among children in Hungary.
• To investigate the correlation between antibiotic dosage form and patient age.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of issued prescription data from pharmacies to identify correlations between dosage form and patient age.
• Extrapolation of findings to large aggregated datasets using a correlation between liquid oral antibacterial products and pediatric prescriptions.
• Demographic data integration to compare pediatric and adult antibiotic exposure rates.

Main Results:

• A strong correlation (R=0.884; p<0.001) was found between the proportion of liquid oral antibacterial products and pediatric antibiotic prescriptions.
• An estimated 34.6% of prescriptions were for pediatric cases (95% CI: 19.7-60.0).
• Children were exposed to antibiotics three times more frequently than adults, with an annual prescription rate of 2.6.

Conclusions:

• Simple drug-related data, such as dosage form, can be effectively linked to patient age for estimating pediatric antibiotic use.
• The developed estimation method is straightforward and utilizes readily available dosage form data.
• This approach enables the quantification of pediatric antibiotic use in large aggregated datasets, even in the absence of age stratification.