© 2002 Archives of Disease in Childhood
Atoms
In the US there are over 800 over-the-counter medications for treating the common cold, and there are probably a similar number in European countries. Most parents set great store but paediatricians are sceptical.
Prejudice is all very well, but evidence is all the rage nowadays so we are pleased to publish Schroeder and Fahey's systematic review of RCTs of over the counter medicines for acute cough. It is instructive to look at their figure 1, detailing what must have been a pretty depressing journey through the literature: they immediately triaged 235 of 328 identified trials as inadequate and excluded a further 87 after review. Just six RCTs remained, all less than totally methodologically sound. For what they were worth, their results do not show any benefit of cough medicines over placebo.
Once again, the pointlessness of so many peer reviewed published papers is shown up, not that this will reduce
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
- Full Text
- Full Text (PDF)
- Submit a response
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me when eLetters are posted
- Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in ADC Online
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
