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Allergy medications should not be given to infants under the age of one. The administration in children under 5 is highly inadvisable unless specifically recommended and supervised by a physician. Allergy medications are intended to minimize or block the body's response to allergens. The allergen can be either naturally occurring or synthetic. When you obtain the response to external influences, you mask or hide important signs and symptoms that may portend of a serious or even life threatening reaction later in life.

Infant's immune systems are incomplete and immature. When a baby is born, it has the limited immunity to allergens that it acquired from its mother. Depending on whether or not the child is breast fed, that humoral immunity has a varied limitation in terms of duration, and as a function of time and exposure, hopefully, the infant starts to develop their own immune system and responses. In the best case scenario, giving an infant allergy medication will impede the development of the acquired immune response, setting them up for more progressively intense responses to that allergen in the future.

As babies are still developing throughout their body, their response to the medication is unpredictable. Recommended dosages are based upon body weight in older clinical models. Since the allergy medications will affect numerous systems that are critical to life, giving a young infant allergy medication is at very best a gamble, and a risky one at that. You are wagering that the medication will temporarily alleviate the symptoms while placing your infant in a tenuous and potentially perilous position. Should that child have a paradoxical reaction to the medication, you may have placed their life in jeopardy. While the medication is intended to suppress an unpleasant immune reaction, it may cause cardiovascular, respiratory, and neurological sequelae. Logically, is drying up or clearing their nasal passages, or suppressing a mild cough worth risking their life? While we would all like to think that we know what's best for our baby, logic and a sense of paternalism demands that we consult a physician and allow them to make a recommendation prior to giving an infant any medication.

Depending on the source and nature of the offending allergen, intervention may require something as simple as abstaining from or minimizing exposure. In the case of food allergies, eliminating the offending allergen from the infant's diet would be the simplest and most obvious solution. In the case of inhalant allergies, the same approach would apply. Many mild allergic reactions occur due to the body developing an immune response. If the reaction is of insufficient intensity or duration, continued exposure will lead to an acquired immunity, much in the way allergy shots work in older children and adults.

No medication should be given to an infant one year of age or less without medical consultation and a physician's recommendation. The potential deleterious effects are so pronounced, both in the short term as well as long term, that all efforts to alleviate any sign or symptoms need to be the least invasive possible. As medications work on a systemic rather than on a local basis, and potential side effects and adverse or paradoxical reactions are difficult to predict, "Better safe than sorry" is absolutely the philosophy to embrace.

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