Echinacea research

Echinacea in the Prevention of Colds
Hard on the heels of the review of Echinacea trials by the Cochrane Library, new research just published also shows that Echinacea is effective. The paper, published in Clinical Therapeutics, vol 8, no2 2006, is a meta-analysis of the use of Echinacea in the prevention of induced rhinovirus colds.

This research, led by Roland Schoop of Bioforce, is a meta-analysis of the use of Echinacea in the prevention of induced rhinovirus colds in three studies. Each of these studies had produced seemingly negative results because they did not involve a sufficiently large number of patients, not because Echinacea is ineffective. Once all three are combined in a meta-analysis of 98 patients the results are quite different and statistically significant. The conclusions are:

	The risk of catching a cold increases by 55% in the absence of preventive treatment with Echinacea.
	Assuming that an adult catches two to four colds a winter on average, taking Echinacea as a prophylaxis can prevent one to two colds a year.
	If the bug does strike, it tends to be milder in people taking Echinacea than in placebo. Symptoms abate after just three to five days in people taking Echinacea to treat a cold; this is more than twice as effective than in those taking a placebo.
	Echinacea is even an effective prophylactic in cases of abnormally high viral load.

Schoop R, Klein P, Suter A, Johnston SL. Echinacea in the Prevention of Induced Rhinovirus Colds: A Meta-Analyses. Clinical Therapeutics. 2006; February (2)