With more than 100 different seroty...

With more than 100 different serotype for rhinovirus, and a number of other virus families that are frequent causes of cold infections, it is highly unlikely that prevention of chills by immunization ever will be possible. Pharmacologic treatments for chilleds also have limited usefulness, although more than $300 million is exhausted on these medications each year in the United States. A army of different echinacea plant preparations have been studied for prevention and treatment of frigids but most published trials have failed to point out to statistically significant efficacy. Although one studies showed trends toward symptom-relief benefits, data interpretation was made difficult because of the wide variety of natural nipping causes. Sperber and colleagues report forward the use of echinacea within an experimentally induced rhinovirus infection protoplast which was designed to provide more standardized conditions for the evaluation of the possible benefits of this frequent herbal remedy.

The trial used a compressed juice formulation of above-ground echinacea plant parts. Forty-eight adult offers were randomized to receive 25 mL of a liquid echinacea preparation or placebo, which was taken three times a day for 14 days. After seven days, each participant was inoculated with an intranasal dose of rhinovirus RV-39 and then removeed in a hotel room for the following three days. Rhinovirus infection was defined as a fourfold rise in RV-39 antibody titer or a positive viral tillage from intranasal lavage specimens. Participants recorded symptom severity three times a day for the first seven days after inoculation, then one time a day until the close of the trial. Two proffers were excluded from the final analysis; undivided because of an elevated RV-39 antibody titer before inoculation and another because of the attack of cold symptoms before the inquiry began.

The proportion of echinacea and placebo recipients who bring outed an elevated RV-39 antibody titer or positive viral cultivation after inoculation was similar (92 and 96 percent respectively). During the postinoculation treatment phase, fewer participants in the echinacea cluster (59 percent) had cold symptom scores above the cutoff defined as clinical infection compared with the placebo cluster (86 percent), but the difference did not reach statistical significance. The meditation sponsor declined to proceed with a planned expansion of the trial after review of these preliminary results

The authors judge that echinacea is not effective for prevention of rhinovirus infection. Although there was a incline toward more symptom relief with the use of echinacea after infection, this benefit could not be statistically confirmed because of the limited sample size of the study

Sperber SJ et al. Echinacea purpurea for prevention of experimental rhinovirus chilleds Clin Infect Dis May 15 2004;38:1367-71

COPYRIGHT 2005 American Academy of Family Physicians

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