PADDINGTON Medicines should be tested on children to prevent them from taking an unsuitable drug or dose, a leading paediatrician has said (Nicola Woolcock writes).
Professor John Warner, the head of the department of paediatrics at Imperial College, London, said that clinical research should be carried out on children because doctors were currently obliged to scale down treatments designed for adults.
Speaking at the opening of Britain’s first unit devoted to paediatric clinical research, he said that about 40 per cent of medicines prescribed to children had never been tested on them.
The Paediatric Research Unit will be run by researchers from Imperial College, London, and St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, West London.
Professor Warner said that therapies should be designed specifically for children as they have different metabolisms, immature organs and diseases that can behave unexpectedly. He said: “We have a desperate need to understand precisely how children’s bodies work so that we can custom-design therapies for them.”