Try chicken soup

Too many parents are giving their kids over-the-counter cough and cold medicine despite Health Canada’s warning that such drugs deliver no benefit and carry very real peril.

Almost one child in five children under the age of 6 is being dosed with these products, according to a troubling new study by Toronto researchers. As a result, they’re at increased risk of adverse events including convulsions, heart palpitations, impaired consciousness and, in cases of accidental overdose, even death.

Evidently, a lot of people can’t be bothered to read warnings on a label. Perhaps parents put too much blind trust in pills and potions. Maybe this is a symptom of a society that demands instant gratification — including immediate relief from a cough or cold. Either way, it’s putting kids at risk and it needs to stop.

Health Canada raised an alarm on this back in 2009 when it issued a public health advisory and required labels on cough and cold medications to state explicitly that they were not for use by children under 6.

Toronto researchers, led by St. Michael’s Hospital pediatrician Dr. Jonathon Maguire, studied use of these products in about 3,500 young children, before and after Health Canada changed its labeling rules. Their results, published in the Canadian Journal of Public Health, revealed that the warning had only a small effect.

About18 per cent of vulnerable kids were still being given assorted cough suppressants, decongestants and antihistamines that should have been off-limits. That was down from 22 per cent before the rule change.

Parents need to pay more attention. Young children are more likely to experience an adverse reaction and are in a poor position to describe side effects from such products. “With no real benefit, and documented risks, stronger measures may be needed to curtail their use,” said Maguire.

Two changes are in order. Larger, more prominent warning labels would help boost parents’ awareness. And these medicines could be reclassified so they’re kept behind the counter, requiring customers to ask for them. That gives pharmacists a chance to pass on a verbal warning.

The irony is that children readily recover from coughs and colds without pharmaceutical intervention. Rather than turning to overthe-counter products that are risky as well as useless, parents would do better to administer a dose of good old-fashioned chicken soup.