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Consumers have been using a common over-the-counter oral decongestant known as phenylephrine for years, but that may not continue much longer.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has asked a panel of its advisors to reassess the drug's effectiveness. The medication's safety isn't in question, just whether it actually does what it claims to do.

The FDA's Nonprescription Drugs Advis...

It's not always necessary to lower a child's fever, but parents often do.

A new poll from Michigan Medicine found that about one-third of parents reach for fever-reducing medicines too quickly.

"Often parents worry about their child having a fever and want to do all they can to reduce their temperature. However, they may not be aware that in general the main reason to treat a feve...

It might seem like your toddler or preschooler has a nose that is always runny, but experts say that's normal.

"Children under 6 years of age average six to eight colds per year, with symptoms lasting an average of 14 days,"said Dr. Maria Mejia, an associate professor of family and community medicine at Bayl...

Researchers may have sniffed out why colds are more likely in wintertime: The answer may lie within the nose.

A previously unidentified immune response inside the nose is responsible for fighting off the viruses that cause upper respiratory infections, according to researchers at Massachusetts Eye and Ear and Northeastern University in Boston.

Unfortunately, cold weather inhibits th...

Folks with young kids at home may be less likely than others to develop severe COVID-19, a new study suggests.

Children bring home colds from day care and school and give them to their parents, and it's thought those lower-level infections may ultimately defend Mom and Dad from the worst of COVID. Both common colds and COVID-19 are coronaviruses, so the theory goes that getting one might ...

COVID-19 might be easing into a new status as a widely circulating and somewhat harsher version of the common cold, experts say - a virus that folks could contract repeatedly, even if they were recently infected.

"[SARS-CoV-2] is destined to join four of its family members and become an endemic coronavir...

If you get infected with COVID-19, there may be a sliver of a silver lining: COVID may help protect you against the common cold, researchers say.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 belongs to a large and diverse family of coronaviruses that include common cold viruses.

Because viruses in this f...

The fossilized bones of a young dinosaur show evidence of a respiratory infection that may have caused familiar flu-like symptoms -- fever, coughing and trouble breathing.

Dolly, as she's been dubbed by researchers, was an immature diplodocid -- a large, long-necked plant-eating sauropod. Her remains were found in southwest Montana and date back about 150 million years to the late Jurassi...

Vaccination is still the best way to protect someone from COVID-19, but new research suggests that immune system activation of T-cells by common colds may offer some cross-protection.

The study might also provide a blueprint for a second-generation, universal vaccine that could prevent infection from current and future variants, the research team said.

"Being exposed to the

When children have colds, parents may want to hold off on using cough and cold medicines, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration suggests.

Most children get better on their own, and cough or cold medicines won't change the natural course of a cold or make it go away faster.

Also, some cough and cold medicines can have serious side effects, such as slowed breathing, which can be life-...

Many people pop a zinc supplement at the first sign of a cold, and there's new evidence supporting the habit.

Australian researchers found that the supplements appear to help shorten respiratory tract infections, such as colds, flu, sinusitis and pneumonia.

Many over-the-counter cold and cough remedies offer only "marginal benefits," the researchers noted, making "zinc a viable 'na...

Social distancing and mask mandates during the pandemic nearly eliminated cases of the flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) among children, a new study finds.

"Numbers don't lie. Face masking, and proper hygiene and isolation, can be effective means to protect the vulnerable groups, such as the elderly and young children, during the respiratory virus season," said study author Dr. Os...

Someday, your smartwatch might be able to tell you if you're coming down with a virus and how sick you'll be -- even before symptoms start.

In a small study, researchers showed that a wearable device, like a Fitbit or Apple Watch, could detect which patients had the H1N1 flu and which had a common cold.

"One of our goals was to be able to detect that infection before a person feels ...