OVER-THE-COUNTER DANGERS

It's 2 a.m., and your 3-year old toddler has a slight fever. You run to the medicine cabinet to get his fever-reducing medicine, but the only thing you can find is made specifically for infants.

It's the same medicine, so I'll just double the dosage, you think to yourself.

Think again.

Many fever-reducers, including popular brands Tylenol and Motrin, make drops for infants and suspension liquid elixirs for older children. The infant drops, at 80 milligrams per .80 milliliters, are more potent than the elixirs, which generally have 160 milligrams per teaspoon, so that if the baby spits it out, the little he intakes will go a longer way.

"Parents think because it comes with a dropper with the infants it's not as potent when really it is," said Nancy Mosley, nurse practitioner with the Rural Health Clinic. "The drops are actually more potent per milligram than the elixir."

Regional Primary Care nurse practitioner Joie Henley said most accidental overdoses occur when kids get into the medicine cabinet. Flavored over-the-counter medicines are an attraction because they taste like candy to them, she said.

Even so, Henley said, an overdose can occur when parents ignore or misinterpret dosage instructions for over-the-counter medicines. The results could be a life-threatening emergency, she said: Overdose of acetaminophen results in liver damage; ibuprofen overdose can mean kidney failure.

"If you have an infant dropper, you can't use the elixir or suspension liquid because they were not meant to be measured that way," she said. "If parents will follow the package inserts, they be okay."

Henley and Mosley said parents should follow dosage directions exactly. Weight charts are better dosage indicators, they said, because a child's size can vary greatly from the norm for his age.

"We give a dosage chart because it goes by weight and that tells the difference," she said. "Most over-the-counter medicines for cough and cold separations say under age 2 or age 6 check with the physician."

Mosely said most manufacturers have worked to make labelling plainer for parents and include toll-free telephone numbers in their packaging. When in doubt, parents should contact the company or call their pediatrician, she said.

In some cases, she said, they could also use alternate forms of therapy to heal a sick child. "They can always go to doctor or look at saline nose drops if its just a stuffy nose. Not every child needs antihistamines or decongestants."