How often can antivirals be taken by children?

Viral infections can rightly be considered traditional "childish." After all, kids have flu, acute respiratory viral infections, acute respiratory infections many times more often than adults. And what can we say about chickenpox, mononucleosis, measles! Even colds in tots are overwhelmingly viral in nature.

If we consider that there are more than half a thousand species of viruses today, there are plenty of variations of different infections in childhood. Of course, regularly ill children need help to overcome ailments, including with the help of medicines. But is it often possible to give a child antiviral drugs? What consequences can this lead to?

Many parents at the first manifestations of colds in a child run to the pharmacy for antivirus tablets or powders. This can be understood, because every mother wants the child to become better, and preferably right now. This approach is wrong in principle, because antiviral drugs have a lot of contraindications and side effects, and uncontrolled use of such drugs can only harm the baby. No wonder in most European countries, antiviral drugs are sold strictly by prescription. In Russia, such a turnover has been introduced only for antibiotics.

Conscious moms and dads call a pediatrician to the house. The specialist, who has already visited several dozen flu-ill children for the shift, routinely prescribes a standard set of anti-flu medicines - antiviral, something to lower the temperature, vitamins. And it seems that nothing terrible happens to the child, but after several similar courses of treatment, the parents begin to notice that the toddler began to get sick more and more, and the illnesses themselves run more and more difficult.

To answer this question, you need to imagine how antiviral drugs act. A number of drugs of chemical origin affect the penetrated virus on the spot, and with it harm to the entire children's body as a whole.

Funds that contain ready-made human interferon (a protein that activates immune processes) quickly crack down on a harmful pathogen. But they practically paralyze the kid’s own immunity resources, his own interferon is not activated, and the systematic use of such drugs makes his natural defense “lazy”. A crumb ceases to resist pathogens, it is often sick, "enough", as they say, any infection with enviable regularity.

All hope for homeopathic remedies, parents often say, and most likely they are mistaken.Homeopathic medicines with antiviral effect, of course, do not exert a strong pressure on the child’s immune system, but their effectiveness in combating viruses has not yet been clinically proven or substantiated. Moreover, in general, no one knows how microdoses of substances that are in the composition of homeopathic pills on the body act. Presumably, well and beneficially, according to the producers. Traditional medicine is increasingly talking about the placebo effect.

In an adult person, the immunity is practically formed, but the children are “catching everything on the fly.” He has the unique ability to memorize an enemy by sight. The child’s immune system remembers all the bacteria, sticks and viruses that she has ever encountered, as well as all her own reactions to them. It is this ability that is due to the fact that a person who has had chickenpox as a child can hardly catch it again. The same happens with the viruses of influenza and ARVI, they just mutate more often, change, and the body has to recognize the threat again and learn to counter it.

Therefore, many doctors recommend trying not to give antiviral drugs at all. The exceptions are the conditions in which the child needs urgent help:

• High temperature with flu for three days. For children up to a year - 38 degrees, for children from a year to three years - 39.
• Severe intoxication of the body.
• The accession of a secondary infection. If, against the background of the outbreak of influenza, complications have appeared (sore throat, bronchitis, pharyngitis, otitis media, etc.)

In order to prevent influenza and ARVI, antiviral drugs can be given only at the height of seasonal epidemics of viral infections, and provided that there are people around the child who are already sick with the flu.

Usually they try to use antiviral drugs for the so-called seven-day cycle: for two days the drug is drunk or dropped into the nose at a dosage equal to half the treatment norm, and therefore they have a five-day break. Further the course is repeated. And so from two weeks to several months.

Interferons are not advised by doctors to take more than two courses a year. If the child is sick more often, you need to take care of other ways to alleviate his condition, without resorting to antiviral medications, except in extreme situations. There are many popular recipes and herbal preparations (not homeopathic!) That can help the kid cope with the disease.

Immunity is easier to form once than to correct the unbalanced protective mechanism of a baby for a long time, normalizing its immune status.

You can learn the opinion of Dr. Komarovsky on antiviral drugs by watching the following video.