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New York – Seven Thousand Children Yearly Become Ill From Cold Remedies

Research in recent months has indicated the importance of children refraining from taking cold and flu mediations. But a recent study has indicated it’s even more serious than that. Over seven thousand Emergency room visits in America over the last twelve months can be traced to children taking common cold medications.

The problems appear to stem from reactions from the medications among the two to five year old age group. The biggest issue appears to be when children self medicate, or get into the medications on their own trying to be helpful. Adverse reactions vary, but they are all fairly serious.

“Whenever a small child winds up in a hospital ER due to having access to these types of medications then it’s certainly a huge problem,” said Daniel S. Budnitz. Budnitz is on staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC gathered the research and published the study.

The study released last week was done on the basis of data from sixty-three different hospital ER rooms over the time period 2004 and 2005. “There are a lot of needless trips to the Emergency Room that could be prevented,” said Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein. Dr. Sharfstein is the public Health Commissioner for the city of Baltimore. Sharfstein also has been a leader in the push to have the FDA regulate and prohibit administering these medications to children.

“It is time to have the FDA ban or pull the plug on many of these medications,” said Dr. Sharfstein.