Submitted by Armen Hareyan on Jun 26th, 2007
Echinacea
Echinacea herbal remedy reduces risk to catch cold by 58 percent.
The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal published study conducted by Dr. Craig Coleman, University of Connecticut School of Pharmacy, Hartford Hospital. The study considered 14 existing previous studies about echinacea and concluded that the remedy can shorten common cold by 1.4 days.
Echinacea comes from a North American plant purple coneflower. Its combination with vitamin C reduces risk to catch cold by 86 percent according to the study. Researchers mentioned three common properties of echinacea that are positive for immune system: alkamides, chicoric acid, polysaccharides.
The World Health Organization has already recognized echinacea as cold preventing herbal remedy in 1999, but the existing studies still don't give enough information about its impact on cold.
The existing studies have considered only 1600 people so they don't give the entire picture of echinacea. Dr. Craig Coleman said: "All the studies trended toward reducing a patient's odds of developing a cold. But none of them was large enough ... to prove it statistically."
"Someone needs to do a really large, well-done, randomised trial. That is unlikely to occur because there is a lack of funding," Dr. Coleman aded.
So these studies are not enough to have the entire picture of echinacea. More funds are needed to open herbal remedy for product manufacturers and more studies need to be conducted to discover all benefits of echinacea. by Ruzan Harutyunyan for eMaxHealth.com
Source:
eMaxHealth 