Vicks VapoRub

No doubt many of you know what Vicks VapoRub is. Most likely you have used it to soothe your chest when you have a cough or cold. A common sight would be a parent rubbing a bit of VapoRub onto the chest of a child who is suffering from a stuffy nose and cough. I was therefore intrigued by an article entitled ‘Vicks VapoRub induces mucin secretion, decreases ciliary beat frequency, and increases tracheal mucus transport in the ferret trachea’ (Chest 2009; 135: 143 – 148).

Paediatricians from Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina, USA recently had to treat an 18-month old girl who developed severe respiratory distress after Vicks VapoRub was applied directly under her nose. Consequently, they decided to perform some experiments on healthy ferrets to investigate the effect of Vicks VapoRub on mucin secretion by the trachea. Trachea specimens were incubated with or without Vicks VapoRub in culture plates. They found that mucin secretion by trachea cultured with Vicks VapoRub was increased by 63%. They concluded that their findings were similar to the acute inflammatory stimulation observed with exposure to irritants. This irritation leads to increased mucus secretion which then obstructs small airways and increases nasal resistance. The authors saw a further two cases of respiratory distress in toddlers who had used Vicks VapoRub. The senior author of the research paper recommends not putting Vicks in or under the nose of a child or adult.

I have no doubt that many thousands of parents have used Vicks VapoRub on their children to soothe their symptoms of chest congestion. How many have had severe respiratory symptoms because of its use is unknown. Could these 3 cases be an idiosyncratic response to Vicks? Or could the respiratory distress be a response to too mcuh Vicks being placed into the nose? This report is unlikely to stop people from using Vicks VapoRub on their children. What this report can do is to raise public awareness that Vicks VapoRub can induce severe breathing difficulty in some.