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Four Things That Are Claimed To Treat A Common Cold - Do They Actually Work?

By: Bill Achen

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1. Zinc. The mineral zinc, available in cough drops, nasal sprays, and gels, may work by blocking the formation of proteins necessary for an everyday cold virus to reproduce.
Although all the hype about zinc for a remedy of an average cold, scientific studies are minimal. It's said that only fourteen published studies that looked at zinc the scientific way, with both placebo and treatment groups. They say zinc lozenges, don't work. One well-designed scientific study reported a positive effect on treating an everyday cold with zinc nasal gel. But the study results have not yet been duplicated.
2. Vitamin C. For many years, believers in vitamin C have said taking this vitamin supplement can nip a cold in the bud. The claim is partially triggered by research that find vitamin C affects resistance to virus in animal research.
But in humans? Experts disagree on this slightly but lean toward the negative. Some say vitamin C has not been proven to decrease the duration of an average cold. One 2007 study showed that if vitamin C is taken after a cold begins, it doesn't reduce the cold or make it less severe. But when it is taken daily as a preventive treatment, not just after that first sneeze, it can very slightly shorten cold duration, by about 8% in adults and by about 14% in children.
Very athletic people, marathon runners, for instance, might cut their risk of an everyday cold in half by taking the vitamin, the study also showed.
But Dr. Gwaltney does not agree. The weight of scientific evidence and the well-done studies prove that vitamin C does not keep us from getting colds, says Gwaltney. It could possibly have some mild effect on treating colds.
3. Echinacea. The herbal supplement echinacea, like Vitamin C, spikes controversy among cold experts. Advocates say it's an immune builder with antiviral characteristics and other benefits, so it's good at preventing colds. However, two recent studies on the natural remedy have yielded conflicting conclusions. In one 2007 scientific study, University of Connecticut researchers concluded that echinacea reduces the odds of developing a normal cold by 58% and reduces its duration by 1.4 days. But a previous study, conducted by Gwaltney's colleagues at the University of Virginia and published in 2005 in The New England Journal of Medicine, showed no benefit from the herb in either reducing the severity of a cold infection or preventing an everyday cold.
Echinacea drew a "no" vote from our three experts -- Gwaltney, Blandino, and Owen Hendley, MD, professor of pediatrics in the division of infectious diseases at the University of Virginia, Charlottesvile.
4. Chicken Soup. Advocates of hot chicken soup, forever as a cold treatment, say it could help soothe inflammation that can make the symptoms worse.
The issue with proving scientifically that chicken soup is effective, says Gwaltney, is finding a legitimate placebo food to study against it in a scientific way. We were contacted by a soup producer to do research on chicken soup, he explains. We thought we could use another hot fluid for placebo, he says. But it's got to be exactly like [like chicken soup]. They didn't find anything that was equal. Gwaltney calls chicken soup "a waste of time."
That's despite the well-publicized report published in 2000 in which researchers reported that chicken soup, which they studied in the laboratory, may have an anti-inflammatory effect on easing symptoms of upper respiratory infections. But the report doesn't prove chicken soup does anything for cold symptoms, Gwaltney says, because it didn't include a test of people nor include a placebo for comparison.
Although chicken soup may not really fight a cold, it can help fight dehydration that can happen when you have an average cold or the the everyday flu.

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