Is Echinacea useless?
The benefits of dietary supplements with echinacea are questioned
Copper News based on the materials of the Center for Advancing Health: Evidence Mixed on the Usefulness of Echinacea for ColdsMeta-analysis of the results of 24 clinical trials did not reveal significant benefits from the use of dietary supplements based on echinacea as a means of prevention and treatment of acute respiratory viral infections.
According to the authors of the work published in the journal The Cochrane Library (Karsch-Volk et al., Echinacea for preventing and treating the common cold), although some such drugs can have a small preventive effect compared to placebo, its clinical significance is not obvious.
A group of six specialists from Germany, Austria and the USA has been regularly conducting such an analysis since 1998 and, according to one of the authors, Bruce Barrett, representing the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Wisconsin, his results have always been ambiguous.
Echinacea is a genus of perennial plants from the Asteraceae family. Preparations based on it are widely sold in Europe and North America as a natural immunomodulatory agent for infectious and inflammatory diseases of the upper respiratory tract. According to Barrett, about eight billion dollars are spent annually on the purchase of such pharmaceutical products in the world.
This time, Barrett's group analyzed an array of new data obtained during 24 randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trials, and also interviewed experts about the results of published and unpublished studies. A total of 4,631 participants and 33 different echinacea-based drugs were involved in the trials.
The authors draw the attention of both patients and doctors to the fact that the drugs present on the market differ in many parameters – by the type of plant and its used parts, production methods, additional components, and so on, which cannot but affect their properties, which remain largely unexplored, and the effect they have on the health of consumers. In general, the results of the analysis conducted by Barrett's group showed that some of these drugs can reduce the comparative risk of ARVI by 10-20 percent, which the authors estimate as a small effect of unclear clinical significance.
As for the effect of taking drugs with echinacea after the onset of the disease on its duration, the authors also found no statistically significant effect. "It seems that taking echinacea for prophylactic purposes can somewhat reduce the likelihood of a cold, and in some cases have a small therapeutic effect, but the data are too heterogeneous for an unambiguous conclusion," Barrett summed up.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru25.02.2014