When I revealed my transgressions to Ian Paul, a pediatrician who has uncovered the shortcomings of children's cold medicines, he was sympathetic. "It's hard," says Paul, an associate professor of pediatrics and public-health sciences at Penn State University, "because we have such a strong desire to get things to a child who's uncomfortable." He was surprised to learn, back in 1997 when the American Academy of Pediatrics warned parents that two popular over-the-counter cough suppressants, codeine and dextromethorphan, did nothing to relieve coughs in young children, that there was very little research on the subject. Paul decided to do some investigating himself. He tested two of the most widely used kid cold remedies, the antihistamine diphenhydramine (Benadryl) and dextromethorphan, giving them to kids whose ages ranged from 2 to 18. Not only were the drugs no better than a placebo at relieving symptoms, but neither the child nor the parents got more sleep. (Other research, including reviews by the Cochrane Collaboration, found little evidence that the drugs relieve symptoms in adults, either.)
Despite the hard evidence, I could almost convince myself that the lollipop in a spoon might have a harmless placebo effect were it not for the fact that these nostrums aren't harmless. Earlier this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 1,519 children under age 2 wound up in emergency rooms in 2004 and 2005 for overdoses and other problems caused by cough and cold medicines. In 2005, three babies died from the drugs. The problem, Paul says, is that it's too easy to administer too much. Parents may give two different remedies, not realizing that both contain the same active ingredient. Or Dad gives a dose, and then Mom does, too. Or the day-care provider medicates a kid who was already given medicine at home. Tiny children are particularly vulnerable, because the margin of error is so much smaller.
This comes at the wake of a cold medicine recall (AP). CVS stores have already made an annoucement today they are removing all infant cough/cold medicines from their stores.
