CHICAGO (AP) — Removing cough and cold medicines for very young children from store shelves led to a big decline in emergency room visits for bad reactions to the drugs, government research found.
But the results
released online Monday are a mixed bag: Some parents were still giving their
infants and toddlers these medicines, and many ER cases still involved
youngsters who apparently got hold of the medications themselves.
That suggests parents
who stopped using them hadn't discarded old bottles or kept them out of reach
after manufacturers voluntarily withdrew medicines labeled for infants and kids
up to age 2 in 2007.
The bottom-line
message: "Keep all medicines up and away and out of sight," said Dr.
Daniel Budnitz, the study's senior author and a researcher at the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention.
Budnitz said the
results also indicate the need for better childproof containers.
The study appears in
the journal Pediatrics.
Makers of over-the-counter
cough and cold medicines voluntarily withdrew the products, mostly syrups, in
October 2007. Pediatricians had complained that the products don't work in
young kids and posed a safety risk because of accidental overdoses causing
extreme drowsiness, increased heart rate and even some deaths.
The Food and Drug
Administration in 2008 warned against using the medicines in children younger
than 2; labels now advise against using them in children younger than 4,
Budnitz noted.
CDC researchers
compared nonfatal ER visits in children younger than 2 with bad reactions to
cough and cold medicines in the 14 months before the withdrawal and in the 14
months afterward. A total of 63 nationally representative hospitals were
involved.
Extrapolating, the
number of visits nationwide linked with cough and cold medicine dropped by more
than half, from 2,790 visits to 1,248, the researchers found.
However, two-thirds of
the cases before and after involved kids taking medicine on their own.
Dr. Elizabeth Powell,
an ER physician at Chicago's Children's Memorial Hospital, called that result
disappointing but said it may have taken a while for parents to get the message
"so these things aren't laying around the house."
The removal left many
parents feeling helpless about relieving their children's cold symptoms. Powell
said parents often bring babies with stuffy noses and other cold symptoms to
the emergency room seeking help. She tells them there's little doctors can do
other than suggesting parents remove excess mucous with a bulb device and try
acetaminophen (Tylenol) or ibuprofen for comfort.
Copyright 2010 The
Associated Press.
