Cold and flu season is upon us.  When we're unlucky enough to come down with something, it's almost second nature to reach a multi-symptom cold medicine.  New findings show that, when it comes to children, parents should think twice before giving such medications to their children.

Last year, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) announced that eading manufacturers of pediatric cough and cold medicines are adding a warning to their products' labels, "Don't use over-the-counter pediatric cough and cold medicines in children younger than 4."  FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research Janet Woodcock, MD, says FDA supports the label "change" and drug manufacturers are doing this voluntarily.

 

 The American Academy of Pediatrics strongly recommends that over-the-counter cough and cold medications not be given to infants and children younger than 2 years because of the risk of life-threatening side effects. Also, several studies show that cold and cough products don't work in children younger than 6 years and can have potentially serious side effects.

 

The New York Times recently reported results of a new Centers for Disease Control (CDC) study on unintentional medication overdoses in children which "indicates 8 percent of emergency room visits and 14 percent of hospitalizations were caused by parents accidentally overdosing their children."

 

The study, which looks at causes for emergency room visits, estimates that 70,000 children under 18 years of age visit emergency rooms annually suffering from unintentional medication overdoses causing adverse drug events. More importantly, 75 percent of the overdoses occurred in children under age 5.

 

CDC's web page on child medication safety further indicates that the number one cause of emergency room visits due to adverse drug events in young children under the age of 5 is the unsupervised consumption of medicines.  CDC also notes, according to WebMD, that 7,000 children under 11 go to emergency rooms each year after taking cough and cold medicines. Roughly two-thirds of those adverse drug events occurred after children consumed medication while unsupervised.

Recently, there has been controversy over the safety and efficacy of many cough and cold medicines for young children.   Last year, the FDA.issued a public health advisory warning against the use of such medicines for children under two.  In October, manufacturers voluntarily changed the labeling and warnings to state that these medicines should not be given to children under four.