Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, October 6, 1994 TAG: 9410060044
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune NOTE: Below
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Instead, parents should make sure that their sick children get plenty of rest and drink lots of fluids, doctors say. The cold probably will pass.
``The message for parents is ... to use caution with these medicines, and if they have any questions about their use, they should call their health care providers,'' said Michael Kogan in a telephone interview. Kogan, principal author of the study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, is an epidemiologist with the National Center for Health Statistics in Hyattsville, Md.
The study polled 8,000 mothers of 3-year-olds. Researchers had followed the women since their pregnancies as part of an ongoing study of care.
The study concluded that mothers give cold and cough medicines too often, with or without a doctor's approval, and often pick the wrong medicine for their child's symptoms.
More than half had given their children some sort of non-prescription medicine in the last month, the study found.
In fact, about half of the mothers kept seven or more types of medicines on hand for their kids' coughs, sniffles and fevers, the study found.
The more educated the mom, the greater the tendency to reach for a bottle of medicine at the first sign of a cough or sneeze, the researchers found. The study also said that from 1985 through 1989, poison control centers received 670,000 reports of children up to age 5 involving pain relievers, cough and cold products or gastrointestinal preparations.
But Dr. Suzanne White, director of the Poison Control Center of Children's Hospital of Michigan in Detroit, said those cases typically involve kids who opened a bottle of medicine and swallowed it - not of accidental overdoses by parents.
A bigger problem, the study said, is that moms gave their toddlers the wrong drugs, such as Tylenol for colds instead of fever, or cold/cough combinations to relieve the symptoms so the child can sleep, the study said.
The cough/cold combinations may make a child drowsy but ``have little impact on the child's cold symptoms otherwise,'' said Dr. Anne Gadomski, author of a companion JAMA editorial.
``Parents feel the need to do something for their sick child and thus become easy prey to over-the-counter promotion by drug companies,'' Gadomski said.
She said parents need to understand that preschoolers get four to eight colds and coughs a year; most usually end in five to seven days; there are no cures for most of these illnesses.
by CNB