{"id":3263,"date":"2012-10-19T09:12:57","date_gmt":"2012-10-19T16:12:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.skepticalraptor.com\/skepticalraptorblog.php\/?p=3263"},"modified":"2012-11-02T11:31:33","modified_gmt":"2012-11-02T18:31:33","slug":"echinacea-common-cold-myth-vs-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.skepticalraptor.com\/skepticalraptorblog.php\/echinacea-common-cold-myth-vs-science\/","title":{"rendered":"Echinacea and the common cold\u2013Myth vs. Science"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It\u2019s getting close to winter once again, so people always recommend their various lotions and potions to either prevent the common cold<\/a> or, at least, to reduce the course of the disease. Alternative medicine\u2019s favorite disease to treat is the common cold, mainly because it\u2019s an easy disease to handle without too many serious problems. Also, from the patient’s perspective, the length and seriousness of the cold is usually very subjective, since the patient has a difficult time making an accurate determination when the cold started or ended, and making a quantitative assessment of the seriousness of the disease. Moreover, \u00a0confirmation bias<\/a> is usually the reason one hears that something worked for the cold\u2013the person who reports some product works forgets all the times it doesn\u2019t. Or completely misjudges the actual effects of any treatment.<\/p>\n

The list of products that you might run across in your local pharmacy that claim to have an effect on the common cold are many. Zinc, oscillococcinum, garlic, and vitamin C. I wrote about these products last winter<\/a>, and they mostly don’t work. The strangest cold remedy you might find is oscillococcinum, which is a homeopathic\u00a0preparation derived from duck liver and heart, diluted to 200C, or 200 1:100 dilutions. \u00a0In other words, in a liter of water there are precisely no molecules of duck guts. And there isn\u2019t any logical explanation of a possible mechanism that would allow one to conclude that duck offal has an effect on cold viruses.\u00a0Though Oscillococcinum is supposed to be used for flus, many use it for colds, but it doesn’t matter, why would a diluted potion of duck guts cure any virus? Well, Cochrane Reviews concluded that<\/a>\u00a0\u201dcurrent evidence does not support a preventative effect of Oscillococcinum-like homeopathic medicines in influenza and influenza-like syndromes.“<\/em><\/p>\n

Myth<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

One of the most popular alternative medicine, herbal preventative treatments or cures for the common cold is echinacea<\/a>, a daisy like flowering plant endemic to central and eastern North America. It’s been familiar to people for 10-20 years, and is really a part of popular culture as part of the cold-season. I never take it, but then again, I’m not gullible.<\/p>\n

You might think that echinacea was used by by Native Americans as some herbal medicine, and there is some evidence that it had been. Amusingly,\u00a0its modern-day use as a cold remedy dates to the 1960’s when a Swiss herbal supplement maker who, during a trip to South Dakota in the 1960s, was erroneously told echinacea was used for\u00a0cold prevention<\/a>\u00a0by Native American tribes who lived in the area. In other words, its current use wasn’t even based on a myth or some legend, but on a mistake.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So without any basis in fact, history, or even myth, the alternate medicine world tries to make echinacea out to be one of the great cold remedies out there. For example,\u00a0Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine\u00a0<\/em>published<\/a>\u00a0a study that purported to show that Echinacea has some effect on preventing common colds. Then the press gets ahold of it, which leads to the headlines like:\u00a0Echinacea ‘can prevent colds’<\/a>. How do we get from a mistake to a pill that can prevent colds. Well, that’s why we have science.<\/p>\n

Science<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I’m going to go about this two ways. First of all, let’s take apart this study study, even though I recommend that we should always evaluate primary studies, like the one above, in the broad context of ALL of the peer-reviewed studies on echinacea, a lot of it of much higher quality than the one above. But let’s give it the benefit of the doubt.<\/p>\n

Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine\u00a0<\/em>is a no-impact journal, published by what is considered a “predatory publisher<\/a>“, one that spams email lists and gets authors to pay to publish their articles. In other words, this is about as much a high quality journal publication as I would publishing a book on Kindle and paying for it myself. And then claiming I’m a published author.<\/p>\n

Setting that aside, British National Health Service also analyzed the\u00a0echinacea cold study claims<\/a>\u00a0and found a “number of oddities” that raised doubt over the results. There main points were:<\/p>\n