Do cough medicines work? Given the billions of dollars that we spend on over-the-counter cough and cold remedies in the U.S. every year, we clearly think they do. But cough experts are not so sure.
“We want to believe these remedies will work because we’re so desperately uncomfortable when we’re sick,” says John E. Heffner, MD, a pulmonologist and immediate past president of the American Thoracic Society. “But clinical trials have not found that cough medicines are any better than a placebo.”
Among experts, doubts about the effectiveness of cough medicines are longstanding. Members of the Consumer Healthcare Products Association ( CHPA), an association that represents most of the makers of nonprescription OTC cough and cold medicines in children, voluntarily modified the labels of OTC cough and cold medicines to state "do not use" in children under 4 years of age.
The reasons: a lack of proven benefit and a small risk of serious side effects.
While cough medicines don’t pose the same risks in adults, a larger question looms. If there’s no good evidence that these drugs work, should anyone be using them? Should we banish those sugary cough syrups from our medicine cabinets? Is it time for us to muddle through the common cold without them?
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