Sponsored by the Honey Board of Israel, this small study supposes to demonstrate that honey is superior to control in the treatment of pediatric nighttime cough. Specifically, honey is superior to silan date extract, which apparently resembles and tastes like honey.
This is a prospective, double-blind study of three different honey arms and one control arm. Each group had approximately the same pre-intervention symptomatology severity – cough severity, bothersome nature of the cough, and sleeplessness for bother parent and child – and all interventions improved symptoms. The scores, supposing clinical relevance to a 0.75 difference in score on a 4-point scale, were significantly improved by all interventions. Then, the various types of honey all either strongly trended towards or reached statistical superiority over the silan date extract.
So, if your child has a cough – honey seems to be a reasonable intervention. If you don’t have honey, give them silan date extract! If you have neither – well, just don’t use dextromethorphan. And, 20% of infant botulism cases are traced to contaminated honey, so the current recommendation is not to give honey to patients aged less than 1 year.
Incidental note is also made by the authors that some children likely disliked the more aromatic eucalyptus and citrus honeys.
“Effect of Honey on Noctural Cough and Sleep Quality: A Double-blind, Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Study”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22869830