COVID‐19 pandemic and methanol poisoning outbreak in Iranian children and adolescents: A data linkage study

Background During the first wave of COVID‐19, many Iranians were poisoned by ingesting hand sanitizers and/or alcoholic beverages to avoid viral infection. To assess whether the COVID‐19 pandemic resulted in an increased prevalence of accidental hand sanitizer/alcoholic beverage exposure in children...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research clinical and experimental research, 2021-09, Vol.45 (9), p.1853-1863
Main Authors: Mahdavi, Seyed Amirhosein, Kolahi, Ali‐Asghar, Akhgari, Maryam, Gheshlaghi, Farzad, Gholami, Narges, Moshiri, Mohammad, Mohtasham, Neda, Ebrahimi, Sara, Ziaeefar, Pardis, McDonald, Rebecca, Tas, Basak, Kazemifar, Amir Mohammad, Amirabadizadeh, Alireza, Ghadirzadeh, Mohammadreza, Jamshidi, Farkhondeh, Dadpour, Bita, Mirtorabi, Seyed Davood, Farnaghi, Fariba, Zamani, Nasim, Hassanian‐Moghaddam, Hossein
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescents
Alcoholic beverages
Alcoholism
Children
Cleaning compounds
COVID-19
Epidemiology, Diagnosis and Comorbidity
Ethanol
hand sanitizers
Hospitalization
Intoxication
Legal medicine
Methanol
Original
outbreak
Pandemics
Patients
pediatric
Pediatrics
Poisoning
Sanitizers
Teenagers
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Background During the first wave of COVID‐19, many Iranians were poisoned by ingesting hand sanitizers and/or alcoholic beverages to avoid viral infection. To assess whether the COVID‐19 pandemic resulted in an increased prevalence of accidental hand sanitizer/alcoholic beverage exposure in children and adolescents, we compared pediatric hospitalization rates during COVID‐19 and the previous year. For poisoning admissions during COVID‐19, we also evaluated the cause by age and clinical outcomes. Methods This retrospective data linkage study evaluated data from the Legal Medicine Organization (reporting mortalities) and hospitalization data from nine toxicology referral centers for alcohol‐poisoned patients (age 0 to 18 years) for the study period (February 23 to June 22, 2020) and the pre‐COVID‐19 reference period (same dates in 2019). Results Hospitalization rates due to ethanol and methanol exposure were significantly higher in 2020 (n = 375) than 2019 (n = 202; OR [95% CI] 1.9 [1.6, 2.2], p 
ISSN:0145-6008
1530-0277
DOI:10.1111/acer.14680