Can albumin help with a cold in children?

When a child has a head cold, parents are ready to use various ways to treat it. On the advice of a doctor, relatives or friends of mommies, they may decide to instill the baby’s nose with albumin. But does albucid help with rhinitis, because in its annotation it is said that this remedy is eye drops?

In fact, in most cases, albucide is unable to influence the pathogens that most often cause rhinitis in children. It is an antimicrobial drug that has a bacteriostatic effect, so it can also be called antiseptic. It is this effect that causes its popularity in case of ophthalmic infections, since the drug accumulates in the eye canals after instillation and rather effectively suppresses the activity of bacteria.

For some reason, the efficacy of albucide in eye infections has led to the appearance of the opinion that this remedy will also help with a cold, but in reality the situation is as follows:

1. The predominant causes of the head cold are viruses or allergens, and albumin against such factors is completely useless. This medicine can not destroy viruses or prevent the effects of an allergen on the children's body.
2. Even if the runny nose is caused by bacteria, the effect of albucide is not particularly effective due to the rapid release of the drug in the throat. The drug is unable to linger in the nose and accumulate in sufficient concentration for the bacteriostatic effect. In addition, albumin is not absorbed deeply into the mucous membrane, and instillation cannot process the nasopharynx completely.
3. Quite often, a runny nose of a bacterial nature is caused by pathogens resistant to the effects of albucide. It may be bacteria that are not covered by the spectrum of action of the drug, and microorganisms that have developed resistance to sulfanilamides.

The use of albucide is justified in cases where a runny nose is a manifestation of a bacterial infection. In this case, the bacteria that caused it are susceptible to this drug.

If the mother still wants to start dipping the albumin into the baby’s nose, she should consider these tips:

• Instilling should be carried out after cleaning the nose so that the drug is in contact with the mucosa, and not with mucus. To do this, you need to blow your nose, rinse with saline or clean with an aspirator.
• The tool is buried three times a day with a course of no more than 5-6 days.
• Babies up to one year old should dissolve the medicine 1 to 1 with warm boiled water and put 1-2 drops of the diluted drug into each nostril.

Many mothers do not risk treating a runny nose with albumin after reading the annotation to the drug, as they are not sure that eye drops are worth dripping into their nose. Among the reviews of mothers who used albucide for the treatment of rhinitis, there are equally many reviews about the ineffectiveness of the drug (the drug didn’t help at all to cope with the rhinitis) and about the positive effect (the rhinitis passed, but my mother still had doubts whether it was the albucide that helped).

At the same time, a runny nose will pass on its own, but in the eyes of the parents, a doctor who has not appointed anything looks less competent than a specialist recommending a safe, though ineffective medication. This causes the appointment of albucide with a cold, which would have passed without drugs in a few days.

For information on how to treat a runny nose, see the transfer of Dr. Komarovsky.