Throughout my residency, I never prescribed or recommended cold medicines to children under 12. The data showed them to be ineffective, and they were associated with cost and the potential for side effects – basically a no-win situation. I often got grief from parents looking for a quick fix, or at least some sort of intervention (to make the parents feel better, if anything), but I refused to budge. “Your child’s immune system is strong enough to fight this off on its own,” I would explain. “All we need to do during this time is to support her by keeping her well hydrated and her fevers under control.” I did feel bad that at least some of my parents were less than satisfied by this, but I couldn’t in good conscience do otherwise.

You can imagine my inner feeling of vindication, then, when the FDA recommended against the use of OTC cold meds in kids under 2 and announced investigation into use in kids over 2. It was one of those silent fist-pump moments. Now the FDA has announced some of the early results of that investigation, calculating that over 7000 kids under 12 visit ERs each year because of adverse drug events from OTC cold meds. While in the grand scope, this isn’t a huge number, it does seem like an enormous number once you realize that these events are – essentially – completely avoidable. We’ll see what comes next.