An estimated 7,000 children end up in hospital emergency rooms year because of cough and cold medicines, according to a study released Monday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“In the majority of cases, there ER visits are due to unsupervised ingestion,” said lead author of the study Dr. Melissa K. Scaefer, of the CDC’s Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion.

There were also cases (about one quarter) in which parents gave children the proper dosage but they suffered an allergic reaction or some other problem developed, the study reported.

The study included both over-the counter and prescription medicines. The study comes less than two weeks after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned parents not to give children under age 2 over-the counter cough and cold medicines “because serious and potentially life-threatening side effect can occur.”

The researchers cited a national survey that showed 64 percent of parents consider cough and cold medications to be safe and 20 percent plan to continue to give them to their children under 2 years, despite the FDA’s warning.

“However, if these medications are removed from the market, caregivers may be tempted to substitute products that are labeled for use by older children and adults,” the CDC team wrote.

The study gathered data emerged from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System-Cooperative Adverse Drug Event Surveillance system, from January 1, 2004 through December 31, 2005, which includes 63 emergency departments around the country.

“Annually, an estimated 7,091 patients aged under 12 years were treated in emergency departments for adverse drug events from cough and cold medications, accounting for 5.7 percent of emergency department visits for all medications in this age group,” the researchers wrote.

The researchers were unable to determine what symptoms the children experienced in most of the cases. However, in those cases where that information was available, 19 percent had allergic reactions and 13 percent had neurological symptoms such as sleepiness or problems walking.

Children ages 2 to 5 accounted for 64 percent of the cases and nearly 80 percent of the cases in this age group involved situations where children took the medicines without their parents’ knowledge.

Ninety-three percent of the cases did not need hospitalization, but about 7 percent required additional treatment.

Based on the findings, the researchers recommended the companies that produce such medicines to change the packaging to keep small children from getting the medications, which are often flavored and colored to make them more appealing, Schaefer’s team said.

"One packaging innovation is incorporating adaptors onto bottles of liquid medication such that medication can only be accessed with a needle-less syringe, which prevents unsupervised preschool-aged children from drinking directly from the bottle," they suggested.

"We had also considered the idea of taking coloring out of these medications," Schaefer said in a telephone interview with Reuters.

However, the most important recommendation the researchers made was that parents should not leave such medication in the hands of a 3-year-old and they also should carefully supervise their children.

The study, supported by the CDC and the Department of Energy was published online Monday. It will appear in the April issue of Pediatrics, a journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.