Essay about Echinacea: Common Cold and Echinacea Preparations

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NUTR-101
Supplements

For hundreds of years, supplements and herbal remedies have been used to treat and prevent illnesses. One of these herbal treatments is Echinacea. Echinacea is a flowering herb native to central and eastern North America, used by Native Americans for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years before settlement of the colonies and further exploration of medicine. According to Wallace Sampson, MD, its modern day use as a treatment for the common cold began when a Swiss herbal supplement maker was "erroneously told" that echinacea was used for cold prevention by Native American tribes who lived in the area of South Dakota.[1] This herb is traditionally believed to be an immunostimulator, stimulating the body’s immune system and warding off infections. It is also less commonly used as a laxative. Echinacea was one of the basic antimicrobial herbs from the mid-19th century through the early 20th century. Its use was documented for snakebite, anthrax, and for relief of pain. In the 1930s echinacea became popular in both Europe and America as an herbal medicine. [1] Although Native American tribes didn't use echinacea to prevent the common cold, some tribes did use echinacea to treat some of the symptoms that could be caused by the common cold. Echinacea is taken in several different forms, including extracts, expressed juice, roots, and the leaves, in crushed, whole, or pill form. Numerous clinical studies have been performed by labs and scientists across the world to prove or disprove its efficacy, longevity, and safety, in both children and adults, of both the prevention and treatment of upper respiratory infections and the common cold. Since the immune systems of children are less developed, it is suggested that the herb may have a different effect than in the adult body for the same type of infection. The main focus of the following two studies presented are for the treatment of infections.
One extensive study on the effectiveness of Echinacea was performed by a group of doctors for the New England Journal of Medicine between May 2002 and March 2004 [2]. The study was performed on healthy, young volunteers recruited from the University of Virginia community. Six different groups, or cohorts, of volunteers were given an experimental strain of the rhinovirus, also known as the common cold. This virus, Rhinovirus type 39, was developed in a lab and extensively tested for safety [2]. The virus was administered nasally to the volunteers in each group, and to ensure that the study was blind, the volunteers were asked before, during, and after the study if they were taking the placebo, Echinacea, or if they didn’t know. A total of 419 subjects completed the study. The Echinacea preparations were all extracted from the same root of the same plant to ensure consistency between the treatments. On the first day of the study, all subjects received their respective treatments to take as outpatients, then isolated in individual hotel rooms for the remainder of the study. The subjects were inoculated and instructed to take their treatment as prescribed. They were asked to record their symptoms and their severity, on a scale of 1 to 5 in the morning and evening daily. The results showed that 90 percent of the subjects were compliant in taking their medication for the duration of the study [2]. The measures of the study showed that the symptom scores for those taking Echinacea were not significantly lower than those of the volunteers taking the placebo. The results of the study show that the extract of Echinacea used had no effect on the symptoms, severity, or duration of the illness. I believe one positive thing about this study is the method in which it was carried out; by administering the virus to the subjects then isolating them ensured that they would likely not be in contact with another possible illness, to keep the results pure and accurate. However, it is my belief that the group should have used a group of
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