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Bridget M. Kuehn

JAMA. 2007;298:1151.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a public health advisory on August 15 warning parents to not give over-the-counter cold and cough medicines to children younger than 2 years and to use several precautions when using them in older children (http://www.fda.gov/cder/drug/advisory/cough_cold.htm). The advisory comes in the wake of increasing reports of serious injuries and deaths among infants and toddlers treated with these drugs.

Many of the adverse events reported were caused by inadvertent overdoses when parents gave the drug to a child too often or at higher than the recommend dose, according to the FDA. Some overdoses were caused when the parents gave a child combinations of cold and cough medicines, not realizing the products contained the same active ingredient.

As a result of such problems, the FDA has decided to reevaluate the risk and benefits of over-the-counter cold and cough medicines for children. . . . [Full Text of this Article]