Study on echinacea’s ability to prevent colds proves nothing worth publishing.
They call this a news worthy study of echinacea and colds? 58 people over 8 weeks! Give me a break!
Lets see, I would think that over 8 weeks about 20 of the 58 people would normally be expected to get a cold. Then of the 29 who took the echinacea (ten of these might get a cold in this period ) had 5 fewer sick days than the other 29 that took a placebo? Seems to me that your study supports that those who took echinacea had five fewer sick days and thus probably had fewer colds.
If you are going to publish studies on echinacea publish a study that actually proves something. A study needs to be done on hundreds or thousands of people over a whole season in the way that people are directed to take echinacea. You are not supposed to take echinacea everyday for colds. You only take it when you are exposed to colds or when you are already coming down with a cold to lessen the duration. We already have studies that prove if you take echinacea every day it becomes less effective and might even be worse then taking nothing at all. However, if you take it as directed studies prove it will help prevent colds and lessen the duration of colds.
So what was the name of the drug manufacturer that sponsored the farce?
Researchers at the University of California San Francisco followed 58 volunteers for eight weeks and found no definitive evidence that echinacea prevented nasal congestion, sore throats and other cold symptoms.
While the echinacea group reported fewer sick days than the placebo group, nine versus 14, researchers chalked the difference up to chance.
Date posted: Friday, April 25th, 2008 9:39 am | Under category: Health, Health care, Junk Science, dumb, irrational
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