Cough and cold medicines

March 18, 2007 by Kenneth Carlson, MD

One of our more common questions we here is what cough or cold medicines to give kids when they are sick. These medications have come under increasing scrutiny lately for a number of different reasons.

We recently changed our recommendations for the use in very young children based on recent information from the FDA regarding serious rare side effects occurring to young children. More information from WebMD. With this and the fact that these medications rarely have any benefit for young children in reducing symptoms of a cold we are no longer recommending their use for any child under age two. This does not apply to pain/fever medications such as Tylenol© or ibuprofen which we feel are effective medications for pain or fever in children of all ages. Check out pain medication dosing page for more information..

Antihistamines continue to be useful allergy symptoms such as hay fever or hives but are not helpful with colds. They may actually increase the chance of persistent fluid in the middle ear and ear infections so should not be used for colds.

Decongestant medications (like Sudafed©) are rarely helpful for young children and last year became available by prescription only in Oregon. In general we don’t find these medications very helpful and do not routinely recommend them.

Cough medications can be helpful for kids over age 2, especially for night time symptoms when cough is interfering with sleep. If a child has a history of asthma, we recommend the asthma medications be used first before trying a cough as cough is a common sign of asthma difficulties. Inhalers for a child with asthma better address the underlying cause of the cough than suppressant would.