Some sweet news for kids with colds, p2

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But no one has ever studied it in comparison to other treatments, he said. Paul's research was funded by the National Honey Board, but it went through the rigorous peer review required of all research published in the journal Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

For parents, that kind of research is particularly valuable now that an advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration said last month that children under the age of 6 should not be given over-the-counter cough and cold medicines such as Children's Tylenol Plus Cold and Johnson & Johnson's PediaCare. They don't work very well and there are safety concerns, the panel said.

It stopped short of recommending an outright ban for older kids. But such medications should not be sold for use by infants, the panel said. The FDA is not required to follow advisory panel recommendations, but it usually does.

Even before the panel made its recommendation, pharmacies across the country pulled 14 brands of infant cold and cough medicines from their shelves at the urging of the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, which represents major drug manufacturers.

"When you look at relative risk-to-benefit ratio, I think a lot of natural options are worth considering," said Dr. Timothy Culbert, medical director for the integrative medicine program at Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota.

Dr. Gigi Chawla, a pediatrician with Children's, agreed. "I wish they had studied mom's chicken soup, too," she said.

How study worked

Paul, who authored one of the earlier studies showing over-the-counter cough and cold products were largely useless for kids, recruited 100 kids - and their parents - who had upper respiratory infections. He asked one third of the parents to give their kids a spoonful of buckwheat honey in a non-caffeinated drink, another third got the correct dose of cough medicine for the age of the child, and the remaining third got nothing.

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1 Year, 2 Weeks, 1 day, 17 hours, 15 minutes ago

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