Comparison of pH Levels of the Saliva before and after the Consumption of Cough Syrups in Children

Abstract

Pediatric syrup formulations have been used for a long time in medicine. Cough syrups and other liquid medications are available easily and widely accepted by the children. The high intake of oral medications can be the causative factor for dental erosion and decay. Hence the aim of this study is to compare the efficacy in the pH levels of the saliva before and after the consumption of cough syrups. The study included 50 volunteer children. Children were recruited from the general medicine ward at Saveetha Medical College and Hospitals. Criteria for inclusion are candidates to be completely recovered within 5 days from upper respiratory tract infections such as common cold, cough and asthma. Children not recovering for more than 5 days and with other bacterial infections such as pneumonia, tuberculosis and other chronic respiratory ailments were excluded from the study. Prior to the study, its essence was explained to participants and their parents so that they could provide an informed consent. The collected data were analysed with IBM.SPSS statistics software version 23.0 (2009) to describe about the data descriptive statistics frequency analysis. To find the significant difference between the bivariate samples in Paired groups the Paired sample t-test was used. The pH levels before the consumption of cough syrups was found to be 7.09 and after consumption was 6.86 and the significant p value was calculated to be 0.0002 thus being statistically significant. The present study finds a significant drop in salivary pH level following the intake of cough syrup, which makes them a risk factor for the development of dental caries, and especially in childhood.