Pharmacy Daily | Energy drink abuse alert

ENERGY drinks such as Red Bull, V and Mother pose a significant public health risk and should have more regulation and compulsory warning labels, according to a report in this month’s Medical Journal of Australia. Authors include pharmacist Jared Brown, who’s a Senior Poisons Specialist at the NSW Poisons Information Centre (NSWPIC), along with Naren Gunja, Clinical Senior Lecturer in Emergency Medicine at Sydney University. They analysed calls made to the NSWPIC over the last seven years, and found that the increasing availability of the energy drinks had coincided with a significant rise in caffeine overdoses. In 2004 callers to the centre in relation to energy drinks numbered just 12, with this figure soaring more than fivefold over the next few years to 65 in 2010. At least 128 of the patients required hospitalisation and there was a significant number of adolescent users reporting problems, with a median age for recreational users of 17 years. Some patients reported coingestion with other substances such as alcohol or illicit drugs. “Increasingly, toxicity from caffeine overdose is being reported to hospitals and poisons centres,” the authors wrote, adding that “increasing the community’s awareness of the hazards from energy drinks is of paramount importance”.

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