Combining two household pills may be the best way to treat childhood fever – although official advice tells parents not to do this, researchers said today.
A British study shows the household pill ibuprofen can successfully be used to treat fever in children.
But the best way to treat a child seems to be to give ibuprofen first and then give the drug in combination with paracetamol, according to the new study.
The use of the drugs together flies in the face of official British guidance from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.
Today the researchers from Bristol called for the guidelines to be reconsidered.
For the research, published on-line today by the British Medical Journal, they studied some 156 young children who developed fever.
Parents agreed to give the treatment assigned to them, which were ibuprofen and paracetamol on their own or together.
The researchers, led by Dr Alastair Hay, of Bristol University, state: “Doctors, nurses, pharmacists and parents wanting to use medicines to treat young, unwell children with fever should be advised to use ibuprofen first and to consider the relative benefits and risks of using both medicines over a 24 hour period.”
But writing for the same journal, Dr Anthony Harnden, of Oxford University, warns that a combined treatment may lead to parents overdosing their children.
He says that ibuprofen is the best treatment, adding: “A more complicated alternating regimen of paracetamol and ibuprofen may be less safe than using either drug alone.”
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