When you are exposed to something you are allergic to, your body makes something called histamine. Histamine causes you to have allergy symptoms. Things like sneezing and itchy eyes. ZYRTEC (cetirizine HCl) is an antihistamine, which helps block the action of histamine to help relieve you of your indoor and outdoor allergy symptoms.

Most people who suffer from allergies have many symptoms. ZYRTEC helps relieve:

• itchy, red, watery eyes;
• sneezing and runny, itchy nose;
• postnasal drip;
• itching from hives.

ZYRTEC (cetirizine HCl) is effective because it can provide the allergy symptom relief you’re looking for. Both indoors and outdoors. In studies in a controlled pollen chamber, people who took ZYRTEC saw symptom relief within 1 hour. And one dose of ZYRTEC works for a full 24 hours.

ZYRTEC is approved to treat indoor and outdoor allergy symptoms in children as young as 2 years old. And it’s also approved to treat indoor allergy symptoms in infants as young as 6 months.

Controlled and uncontrolled clinical trials conducted in the United States and Canada included more than 6000 patients aged 12 years and older, with more than 3900 receiving ZYRTEC at doses of 5 to 20 mg per day. The duration of treatment ranged from 1 week to 6 months, with a mean exposure of 30 days.

Most adverse reactions reported during therapy with ZYRTEC were mild or moderate. The most common adverse reaction in patients aged 12 years and older that occurred more frequently on ZYRTEC than placebo was somnolence. The incidence of somnolence associated with ZYRTEC was dose related, 6% in placebo, 11% at 5 mg and 14% at 10 mg. Discontinuations due to somnolence for ZYRTEC were uncommon (1.0% on ZYRTEC vs. 0.6% on placebo). Fatigue and dry mouth also appeared to be treatment-related adverse reactions. There were no differences by age, race, gender or by body weight with regard to the incidence of adverse reactions.