Complementary/alternative medicine use in children in Italy

Objective

In order to estimate and characterise complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use in Italy, the National Institute of Health, in collaboration with the National Institute of Statistics, has carried out a nation-wide survey on CAM, which was included in the last ‘Multipurpose survey among Italian families’ conducted in 1999–2000.

Materials and methods

The survey has been conducted, using face-to-face interviews, on a sample of 60 000 families (around 180 000 individuals) representative of the Italian population.

Results

Almost 9 million people (15.6% of the population) in Italy used at least one type of CAM in the 3 years preceding the interview, and a large proportion of users were children: 9.2% of Italian children aged 0–14 years were treated with at least one type of CAM in the period 1997–99. CAM use shows a marked geographical trend, with highest levels in the north-east (19.7% of children use CAM), followed by the centre (9.5%) and the south (1.9%). A similar trend is observed for adults. This clearly reflects economic and probably cultural differences in the population.

Homoeopathy is the most used therapy in children (7.7% of Italian children), followed by herbal medicine. More than 70% of young homoeopathy users had at least one parent using homoeopathy, in most cases the mother (64%), and more than 30% had both parents also using homoeopathy. Homoeopathy is mostly used to treat acute diseases and pain.

Conclusion

Homoeopathy is the most used type of CAM in Italy and is often used in children. In two-thirds of these cases, the mother also uses homoeopathy.