14 DAY TRIAL // Traditionally, we use chicken soup to soothe a cold and surround a child who was the croup with Steam to help him breathe. A new study says that the latter old-age treatment will not help to ease the cough. Croup swells the tissues around the voice box, leading to a bark similar to a seal and is a response to a viral or bacterial infection. The throat becomes sometimes so inflamed that it blocks the airway.
The study, conducted on 140 children, found that exposing them to various types of humidity did nothing for their recovery. One the groups was exposed to mist generated by a machine so that its water particles were of an optimal size to reach the vocal cords and larynx, the second group experienced mist from a tube aimed towards the face, thing considered equivalent to steam vapor, and the third had air at the normal level of humidity in houses or buildings, 40%.
The researchers found no statistically significant differences between the groups. "The use of humidity even when it was optimally delivered did not bring about any further improvement in the children's condition. People were using steam kettles at home and burning their kids. So that's one of the reasons we wanted to do the study... If we've got a treatment that doesn't work, that something is dangerous, than should we use it?" said Dr. Dennis Scolnik, a professor at the Hospital for Sick Children and the University of Toronto in Canada.
"The illness has a tendency to get better, and if it gets better while you're giving humidity, you'll think it was the humidity," Scolnik added. Also, when the treatment is applied, parents sit with their children to calm them down, a thing which might also help.
"This is a good study, but it's not going to change anything here. Humidity is useful. What this study shows is that 40 percent isn't any more effective than 100 percent," Dr. Mehmet Karliyil, a pediatric physician at Nyack Hospital in Nyack, N.Y., concluded.