{"doi":"10.1080/00952990.2025.2457481","title":"Nonfatal pediatric fentanyl exposures reported to US poison centers, 2015–2023","abstract":"Background: The opioid crisis, driven by fentanyl use, continues to worsen in the US and there has been a lack of focus on nonfatal overdose and how pediatric populations are being affected.Objectives: We determined the prevalence of nonfatal pediatric fentanyl exposures and associated characteristics and delineated how such characteristics are associated with major (life-threatening) outcomes.Methods: This repeated cross-sectional study examined characteristics of pediatric nonfatal fentanyl exposures (aged 0–19 years) reported to poison centers in 49 US states from 2015 through 2023.Results: 3,009 nonfatal pediatric exposures (41.5% female) were reported to poison centers—58.9% aged 13–19 and 41.1% aged 0–12. The number of exposures increased overall from 69 in 2015 to 893 in 2023 (a 1,194.2% increase, p < .001). Exposures increased by 924.3% among those aged 0–12 (p < .001) and by 1,506.3% among those aged 13–19 (p < .001). Ingestion-only use was the most prevalent route of administration by those aged 0–12 (76.9%) and 13–19 (54.1%). Prevalence of ingestion-only use increased from 44.1% of exposures in 2015 to 67.9% in 2023 (p < .001). The majority of patients aged 0–12 were exposed unintentionally (81.7%, vs. 1.0% among patients aged 13–19) while the majority of patients aged 13–19 misused or “abused” fentanyl (65.7% vs. 1.8%). The plurality of exposures (41.0%) resulted in a major (life-threatening) effect.Conclusions: Pediatric exposures to fentanyl are increasing and over one-third of cases are unintentional and/or had documented life-threatening effects. Prevention and harm reduction efforts need to include efforts for youth, particularly as counterfeit pills containing fentanyl flood the illicit market.","journal":"The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse","year":2025,"id":513717,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":9,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.6037,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":334934,"name":"Linda B. Cottler","orcid":"0000-0001-5643-8536","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":876212,"name":"Joshua C. Black","orcid":"0000-0002-7329-2740","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":240123,"name":"Joseph J. Palamar","orcid":"0000-0002-8565-9415","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":38,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:48:23.284782Z","pmid":"40055875","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}