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Packs of previously frozen Brazil chicken legs are seen stacked on a trolley shortly after a member of staff cleared them from the shelves of a supermarket in Hong Kong on March 21, 2017. Getty Images/AFP

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a new warning about a viral social media challenge, which it called "unappetizing" and "unsafe."

The sleepy chicken challenge, which urges people to film themselves cooking chicken in NyQuil, an over-the-counter cold medicine, has been circulating on social media.

Videos of the stunt have gone viral with the hashtag #sleepychicken on TikTok. The platform has now published a warning about challenges on the site when populating the search.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, NyQuil was also trending on Twitter amid the FDA warning.

The popularity and dangers of the challenge prompted the FDA to issue a statement, saying, "These video challenges, which often target youths, can harm people — and even cause death."

While the idea of cooking chicken with an over-the-counter medication like NyQuil was deemed "silly and unappetizing" by the agency, it also called out the dangers associated with the practice.

"Boiling a medication can make it much more concentrated and change its properties in other ways. Even if you don't eat the chicken, inhaling the medication's vapors while cooking could cause high levels of the drugs to enter your body. It could also hurt your lungs. Put simply: Someone could take a dangerously high amount of the cough and cold medicine without even realizing it," the FDA said.

The risks of the sleepy chicken challenge are in line with the dangers reported in another TikTok challenge where users took excessive amounts of Benadryl to force themselves to hallucinate, with the FDA saying that some people had to go to the emergency room or even died after attempting the stunt.

To protect children against these viral challenges, the FDA has reminded parents to keep over-the-counter and prescription medications locked up to prevent accidental overdose. The agency also suggested that parents "discuss the dangers of misusing drugs and how social media trends can lead to real, sometimes irreversible, damage."

The FDA advised parents that if they believe their "child has taken too much medication and is hallucinating, can't be awakened, has had or is having a seizure, has trouble breathing, has collapsed, or is showing other signs of drug misuse" to call 911 to get immediate medical attention or contact poison control.