Inside the medicine cabinet: Making children's medicines a grown‐up issue

Children need medicines that are properly designed and formulated specifically for pediatric use. However, the majority of medicines prescribed for children have insufficient clinical data to support pediatric use or to determine how children will react to such medicines. In particular, children living with HIV/AIDS have limited access to pediatric‐specific antiretroviral drugs used to fight the disease. Recent improvements to U.S. and European pediatric drug testing laws may help generate more drugs tested and approved for children, but more must be done to ensure that children do not lag behind in access to lifesaving AIDS medicines, particularly in resource‐poor countries. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc. and the American Pharmacists Association J Pharm Sci 97:5074-5079, 2008