SAN FRANCISCO
(AP) -- A new government survey suggests the number of people seeking
emergency treatment after consuming energy drinks has doubled nationwide
during the past four years, the same period in which the supercharged
drink industry has surged in popularity in convenience stores, bars and
on college campuses.
From 2007 to 2011, the
government estimates the number of emergency room visits involving the
neon-labeled beverages shot up from about 10,000 to more than 20,000.
Most of those cases involved teens or young adults, according to a
survey of the nation's hospitals released late last week by the
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
The
report doesn't specify which symptoms brought people to the emergency
room but calls energy drink consumption a "rising public health problem"
that can cause insomnia, nervousness, headache, fast heartbeat and
seizures that are severe enough to require emergency care.
Several
emergency physicians said they had seen a clear uptick in the number of
patients suffering from irregular heartbeats, anxiety and heart attacks
who said they had recently downed an energy drink.
More
than half of the patients considered in the survey who wound up in the
emergency room told doctors they had downed only energy drinks. In 2011,
about 42 percent of the cases involved energy drinks in combination
with alcohol or drugs, such as the stimulants Adderall or Ritalin.
"A
lot of people don't realize the strength of these things. I had someone
come in recently who had drunk three energy drinks in an hour, which is
the equivalent of 15 cups of coffee," said Howard Mell, an emergency
physician in the suburbs of Cleveland, who serves as a spokesman for the
American College of Emergency Physicians. "Essentially he gave himself a
stress test and thankfully he passed. But if he had a weak heart or
suffered from coronary disease and didn't know it, this could have
precipitated very bad things."
The findings
came as concerns over energy drinks have intensified following reports
last fall of 18 deaths possibly tied to the drinks - including a
14-year-old Maryland girl who died after drinking two large cans of
Monster Energy drinks. Monster does not believe its products were
responsible for the death.
Two senators are
calling for the Food and Drug Administration to investigate safety
concerns about energy drinks and their ingredients.
The energy drink industry says its drinks are safe and there is no proof linking its products to the adverse reactions.
Late
last year, the FDA asked the U.S. Health and Human Services to update
the figures its substance abuse research arm compiles about emergency
room visits tied to energy drinks.
The
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's survey was
based on responses it receives from about 230 hospitals each year, a
representative sample of about 5 percent of emergency departments
nationwide. The agency then uses those responses to estimate the number
of energy drink-related emergency department visits nationwide.
The
more than 20,000 cases estimated for 2011 represent a small portion of
the annual 136 million emergency room visits tracked by Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention.
The FDA said
it was considering the findings and pressing for more details as it
undertakes a broad review of the safety of energy drinks and related
ingredients this spring.
"We will examine this
additional information ... as a part of our ongoing investigation into
potential safety issues surrounding the use of energy-drink products,"
FDA spokeswoman Shelly Burgess said in a statement.
Beverage manufacturers fired back at the survey, saying the statistics were misleading and taken out of context.
"This
report does not share information about the overall health of those who
may have consumed energy drinks, or what symptoms brought them to the
ER in the first place," the American Beverage Association said in a
statement. "There is no basis by which to understand the overall
caffeine intake of any of these individuals - from all sources."
Energy
drinks remain a small part of the carbonated soft drinks market,
representing only 3.3 percent of sales volume, according to the industry
tracker Beverage Digest. Even as soda consumption has flagged in recent
years, energy drinks sales are growing rapidly.
In
2011, sales volume for energy drinks rose by almost 17 percent, with
the top three companies - Monster, Red Bull and Rockstar - each logging
double-digit gains, Beverage Digest found. The drinks are often marketed
at sporting events that are popular among younger people such as
surfing and skateboarding.
From 2007 to 2011,
the most recent year for which data was available, people from 18 to 25
were the most common age group seeking emergency treatment for energy
drink-related reactions, the report found.
"We
were really concerned to find that in four years the number of
emergency department visits almost doubled, and these drinks are largely
marketed to younger people," said Al Woodward, a senior statistical
analyst with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration who worked on the report.
Emergency
physician Steve Sun said he had seen an increase in such cases at the
Catholic hospital where he works on the edge of San Francisco's Golden
Gate Park.
"I saw one young man who had mixed
energy drinks with alcohol and we had to admit him to the hospital
because he was so dehydrated he had renal failure," Sun said. "Because
he was young he did well in the hospital, but if another patient had had
underlying coronary artery disease, it could have led to a heart
attack."
Copyright 2013 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
