abdulhakeem
31-07-05, 04:11 PM
Posted July 28, 2005
Researchers at the University of Virginia randomly gave 399 volunteers echinacea extract or a placebo for seven days before squirting drops containing rhinovirus up their noses to give them colds. The goal was to find out whether taking echinacea prevents infection.
The National Institutes of Health has bad news for the millions of Americans who spend $155 million a year on the popular herbal remedy echinacea to treat the cough, runny nose and malaise that is the common cold: It doesn't work.
"It's not clinically effective," says Ronald Turner, an expert on the common cold at the University of Virginia School of Medicine and lead author on a major echinacea study.
The study, reported in today's New England Journal of Medicine, is the "most sophisticated" test ever done on the effectiveness of the herbal remedy, says Stephen Straus, director of NIH's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, which financed the work.
Researchers at the University of Virginia randomly gave 399 volunteers echinacea extract or a placebo for seven days before squirting drops containing rhinovirus up their noses to give them colds.
They were then sequestered in individual hotel rooms so that they couldn't be infected by anyone or anything else. The goal was to find out whether taking echinacea prevents infection or can limit the duration of the cold, Turner says.
"The answer was no," he says. "It had no effect on the rate at which volunteers got infected or on their symptoms." The problem with colds, which last about seven days, is "no matter what you do, you're going to get better," Straus says. That might make people think taking echinacea helped when it actually didn't.
http://www.sci-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=37537
Researchers at the University of Virginia randomly gave 399 volunteers echinacea extract or a placebo for seven days before squirting drops containing rhinovirus up their noses to give them colds. The goal was to find out whether taking echinacea prevents infection.
The National Institutes of Health has bad news for the millions of Americans who spend $155 million a year on the popular herbal remedy echinacea to treat the cough, runny nose and malaise that is the common cold: It doesn't work.
"It's not clinically effective," says Ronald Turner, an expert on the common cold at the University of Virginia School of Medicine and lead author on a major echinacea study.
The study, reported in today's New England Journal of Medicine, is the "most sophisticated" test ever done on the effectiveness of the herbal remedy, says Stephen Straus, director of NIH's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, which financed the work.
Researchers at the University of Virginia randomly gave 399 volunteers echinacea extract or a placebo for seven days before squirting drops containing rhinovirus up their noses to give them colds.
They were then sequestered in individual hotel rooms so that they couldn't be infected by anyone or anything else. The goal was to find out whether taking echinacea prevents infection or can limit the duration of the cold, Turner says.
"The answer was no," he says. "It had no effect on the rate at which volunteers got infected or on their symptoms." The problem with colds, which last about seven days, is "no matter what you do, you're going to get better," Straus says. That might make people think taking echinacea helped when it actually didn't.
http://www.sci-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=37537