Saltwater Drops in Nose Could Shorten Kids' Colds

September 6, 2024
Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter

Saltwater nose drops can reduce the length of a kid’s cold by two days, a new study demonstrates.

“We found that children using saltwater nose drops had cold symptoms for an average of six days, where those with usual care had symptoms for eight days,” said researcher Dr. Steve Cunningham, a professor of pediatric respiratory medicine with the University of Edinburgh in the U.K.

“The children receiving salt water nose drops also needed fewer medicines during their illness,” he added.

Children tend to have 10 to 12 colds a year, “which have a big impact on them and their families,” Cunningham said.

Over-the-counter remedies containing drugs like acetaminophen and ibuprofen can treat symptoms, but until now no treatments have been identified that could speed up recovery from a cold, Cunningham said.

For the new study, researchers recruited more than 400 kids aged 6 years or younger and randomly assigned them to take either salt-water nasal drops or usual care if they caught a cold.

Saltwater solutions often are used by people in South Asia as nasal irrigation or gargling to treat a cold, researchers noted.

Overall, about 300 of the kids caught a cold and half were given saltwater drops as their treatment.

Parents administered three drops per nostril a minimum of four times per day, using a saltwater solution they made at home with sea salt, researchers said.

Not only did the kids get better more quickly with saltwater drops, but colds also tended to spread less to other family members. About 46% of those families had other members catch a cold, versus 61% of families whose kids received usual care.

About 82% of parents said the nose drops helped their child get better more quickly, and 81% plan to use the saltwater drops in the future, researchers report.

“Reducing the duration of colds in children means that fewer people in their house also get a cold, with clear implications for how quickly a household feels better and can return to their usual activities like school and work,” Cunningham said.

“Our study also showed that parents can safely make and administer nose drops to their children and therefore have some control over the common cold affecting their children,” he added.

Researchers said the drops likely work by boosting the ability of the respiratory system to fight off the cold virus.

“Salt is made up of sodium and chloride. Chloride is used by the cells lining the nose and windpipes to produce hypochlorous acid within cells, which they use to defend against virus infection,” Cunningham explained.

“By giving extra chloride to the lining cells this helps the cells produce more hypochlorous acid, which helps suppress viral replication, reducing the length of the virus infection, and therefore the duration of symptoms,” Cunningham added.

These findings will be presented at the European Respiratory Society’s annual meeting in Vienna, Austria.

“This is an important study that is the first of its kind to investigate the impact of salty nose drops in children with colds,” said Alexander Moeller, head of the ERS Pediatric Assembly and chief of respiratory medicine at University Children’s Hospital Zurich. Moeller was not involved in the research.

“Although most colds usually don’t turn into anything serious, we all know how miserable they can be, especially for young children and their families,” Moeller said in a meeting news release. “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 colds in their children and family would represent a significant reduction in health and economic burden of this most common condition.”

The research team next plans to investigate the effect of saltwater drops on wheezing during colds. Initial results from this study showed that kids who got the drops had significantly fewer episodes of wheeze, 5% versus 19%.

Because these findings are from a medical meeting, they should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

More information

Stanford Medicine has more about the common cold in children.

SOURCE: European Respiratory Society, news release, Sept. 5, 2024

Parenting Common Cold