Saline nasal drops can shorten children’s colds by 2 days: study

They are giving props to the nose drops.

Researchers in the United Kingdom say that hypertonic saline nasal drops can shorten a child’s cold by two days and reduce the risk that family members will also get sick.

“Children have up to 10 to 12 upper respiratory tract infections, which we refer to as colds, a year, which have a huge impact on them and their families,” explained the University of Edinburgh professor, Steve Cunningham. “There are medicines to improve symptoms, such as paracetamol and ibuprofen, but there are no treatments that can make a cold better faster.”

For the study, researchers taught parents how to make and apply salt water drops to their children’s noses. Three drops were administered in each nostril at least four times a day until the 150 young children got better.

The remaining 151 children were given their typical cold treatment.

“We found that children using saline nasal drops had cold symptoms for an average of six days, where those with usual care had symptoms for eight days,” Cunningham said. “Children receiving saline nasal drops also needed less medication during their illness.”

Only 46% of runny nose households reported that a family member had the child’s cold, compared to 61% of other households.

Eighty-two percent of parents said the nasal drops helped their child get better quickly, with 81% saying they would use the drops in the future.

The research will soon be presented at the European Respiratory Society Congress in Vienna, Austria.

The study’s principal investigator, consultant virologist Sandeep Ramalingam, noted that people in South Asia often use salt water solutions to treat colds.

Cunningham said the cells lining the respiratory tract use chloride from saline droplets to produce hypochlorous acid to defend against viruses.

“By providing extra chloride to the lining cells, it helps the cells produce more hypochlorous acid, which helps suppress viral replication, reducing the length of the virus infection and thus the duration of symptoms,” Cunningham said.

Alexander Möeller, head of the ERS pediatric assembly, said this research is the first of its kind to investigate the effect of saline nasal drops on children’s colds.

“This extremely cheap and simple intervention has the potential to be applied globally; “Providing parents with a safe and effective way to limit the impact of the common cold on their children and their families would represent a significant reduction in the health and economic burden of this most common condition,” said Möeller, who was not included in the study.

The study authors also noticed that children who received nasal drops wheezed less during their colds, and they plan to explore this further.