A recent study shows that nearly one in five school-aged children and preteens in the United States are taking melatonin supplements for sleep, sparking concerns about the safety of the products.
Melatonin is a hormone that the brain produces in response to darkness, which regulates the sleep-wake cycle. In the United States, melatonin is sold as an over-the-counter dietary supplement or sleep aid.
However, the growing prevalence of melatonin usage among children has sparked worries, given the limited safety and efficacy data available for the dietary supplements, according to researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder) in a new study on Nov. 13.
“We hope this paper raises awareness for parents and clinicians, and sounds the alarm for the scientific community,” lead author Lauren Hartstein, a postdoctoral fellow in the Sleep and Development Lab at CU Boulder, said in a press release.
“We are not saying that melatonin is necessarily harmful to children. But much more research needs to be done before we can state with confidence that it is safe for kids to be taking long-term,” she added.
Between 2017 and 2018, only about 1.3 percent of parents in the United States reported that their children were using melatonin, according to the study.
“All of a sudden, in 2022, we started noticing a lot of parents telling us that their healthy child was regularly taking melatonin,” Ms. Hartstein stated.
To gauge the current prevalence of melatonin use among children, researchers surveyed about 1,000 parents in the first half of this year.
Their findings revealed that 18.5 percent of children aged between 5 and 9, and 19.4 percent of preteens aged between 10 and 13, had been given melatonin in the previous 30 days.
Nearly 6 percent of preschoolers under the age of 4 had used melatonin in the previous month, the study showed.
Melatonin Gummy Products
An analysis of 25 melatonin gummy products also revealed that 22 of these products contained different amounts of melatonin than the label indicated.Researchers at CU Boulder found that some melatonin supplements contain other concerning substances, such as serotonin.
“Parents may not actually know what they are giving to their children when administering these supplements,” Ms. Hartstein stated.
There are also concerns over the potential effects of providing melatonin supplements to young people, whose brains and bodies are still in the developmental stage, on their timing of puberty onset.
Co-author Julie Boergers, a pediatric sleep specialist at Rhode Island Hospital, said that while melatonin may serve as a short-term aid, particularly in youth with autism or severe sleep problems, she advises families to use melatonin only temporarily.
“But it is almost never a first-line treatment,” Ms. Boergers said.
“Although it’s typically well-tolerated, whenever we’re using any kind of medication or supplement in a young, developing body, we want to exercise caution,” she added.
Ms. Boergers said anecdotally that parents have reported initial success with the supplement, but over time, children might require higher doses to achieve the same sleep-inducing effect.
Meanwhile, Ms. Hartstein said the increasing usage of melatonin supplements among children suggests “there are a lot of underlying sleep issues out there that need to be addressed.”
“Addressing the symptom doesn’t necessarily address the cause,” she added.
According to the researchers, reports of melatonin ingestion to poison control centers surged by 530 percent from 2012 to 2021, primarily observed among children under the age of 5. More than 94 percent of these cases were unintentional, and 85 percent of the cases were asymptomatic.
