Study: Children Get No Benefit From Cough Meds

July 6 -- Parents: A coughing child keeping you up at night? Don't reach for a cough syrup, it won't help.

A new study finds that over-the-counter cough medications do not reduce nighttime coughing or improve children's sleep any more than non-medicated syrup in children with upper respiratory infections.

And OTC cough syrups also don't help parents of a coughing kid themselves rest any better, the research found.

"Over the counter cough medicines don't appear to provide any benefit for children with nighttime cough," says lead author of the study Ian Paul, a pediatrician at Penn State Children's Hospital, in Hershey, Pa. "And because of the potential for side effects, parents should think twice before giving them to their children."

Cough is the second most common reason for a child to visit a pediatrician. Paul says that one of the main reasons he conducted the study was so pediatricians could give parents advice on how to treat a child's cough based on real evidence.

"Parents always ask what they can give their kids with cough, and there is little information as to what they can use," says Paul.

The study, published in the issue of Pediatrics out today, included 100 children and adolescents between the ages of two and 18 with upper respiratory infections.

The 100 participating children all had symptoms for four days prior to the study. On the day of the study, parents were asked to evaluate the severity and frequency of their children's cough, as well as how the cough affected the parents' nighttime sleep.

The children were split into three groups and each assigned a different syrup to take 30 minutes before bedtime. One group took dextromethorphan, often abbreviated DM and the most common active ingredient in OTC cough medicines. Another took diphenhydramine, an OTC antihistamine that's available in many cold and allergy medications. And the third group took placebo, a non-medicated syrup.