Echinacea halves risk of catching common cold
Echinacea, a medicinal herb that came to
prominence thanks to its use by Sioux Indians, can more than halve the risk of
catching a cold.
Echinacea, a medicinal herb that came to prominence thanks to its use by Sioux Indians, can more than halve the risk of catching a cold, a wide-scale study has confirmed.
Taking echinacea supplements can reduce the risk of a cold by 58 percent and may also shorten the duration of a cold almost one and a half days, according to the paper, published on Sunday in the July issue of the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
The study is a “meta-analysis” comparing the outcome of 14 published trials using echinacea.
One of the trials combined with echinacea with vitamin C, which showed the two together reduced the incidence of a cold by 86 percent.
The history of folk medicine resulting in useful medication has always been fascinating stuff.
Regular readers will know of my appreciation for the capabilities brought to many fields by computational analysis. No doubt some of these studies would be known to one or another manager of an individual study - still, it’s great to have cross-referenced info available on a group of similar works.
Posted: Mon - June 25, 2007 at 07:03 AM