
The FDA requires clinical studies of new drugs in pediatric populations, since many drugs developed for use in adults are also used in children. These studies are often “post-marketing” trials after the drug is approved in adults. But an audit by researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital found that only about a third of these mandatory trials were completed within an average of seven years. As a result, most new drug labels continue to lack child-specific information, and most FDA-approved drugs remain untested in children. …