Achooo! Cold season is coming. Stock up on the Dimetapp.
In spite of FDA and Health Canada warnings that cough and cold medicines should not be given to young children, many parents are still using them. Approximately 10% of children in the US receive cough and cold drugs in any given week. Do you know why? Because they actually help! I know that they say the medications don’t work but, if you’ve had a child with an awful head cold, you know that they do.
Infants and children have required medical attention related to taking cough/cold drugs and there have been deaths associated with the drugs. HOWEVER … the infants and children were given too much of the drugs. In one study, three infants who died had pseudephedrine levels up to 14 times the recommended levels for children 2 to 12.
Why should everyone be denied access to useful medications because some people can’t follow instructions? It’s not that hard. Only give children the recommended doses at the recommended time intervals. If you are giving more than one product, make sure that they don’t have the same ingredients. In fact, those are good guidelines for adults to follow as well.
As a dad and a doctor, I find this a very scary topic. I used to think that as long as my patient’s or I dosed the children’s cold & cough medications right, then everything would be OK. But when I researched this further, it turns out that children have died from “over dose” of ALL THE MAJOR CHILDRENS COLD AND COUGH MEDICINES even when given the correct dose (http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/reprint/108/3/e52?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=cough+medications&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT).
Here are a few interesting facts:
1. Last October 2008, the drug companies promised the FDA that they would change all their labeling to say “do not use” for children under the age of 2, but I was just in the store last week, and a number of packages still had the old labeling!
2. The FDA reviewed safety and effectiveness data this last fall and its expert panel said that “right now the current cold & cough medications should not be given to children under 6.” Here is a link to the FDA’s minutes, “http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/ac/07/minutes/2007-4323m1-Final.pdf”, see page 6. The FDA made a public advisory in January 2008 about never using it for children under 2, because the Drug companies are fighting them on the panels ruling to never use cold and cough medications on children 2 to 6. Since these drugs were previously allowed by the FDA, the FDA is forced to go though “due process” before they are willing to make an official public statement about never giving these medications to children 2 to 6.
3. The number of infant deaths attributed to cold and cough medicines is dramatically underreported. New research published in the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics demonstrated that there were at least “10 unexpected infant deaths that were associated with cold-medication” in 2006 alone in the state of Arizona. Extrapolated over the US and Canadian population, that would be over 500 deaths a year associated with cold-medication! (http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/122/2/e318)
The thing that the drug companies don’t want anyone to know is that these medications never underwent the rigorous safety and effectiveness studies modern medications have to go though, they we grandfathered in the early 1970’s because at that time experts felt like they seemed to work, and they seemed safe enough.
Interestingly, some researchers from Penn State have shown that Buckwheat honey is better then the OTC drugs for children’s cough. There is a web site that talks about this, and gives lots of research to help parents be better informed about how to help their kids. Check out http://www.honeydontcough.com/
-Daddydoctor