| Breaking News: Further Positive Results for Echinacea
| 14 July 2007 |
As widely reported in the media this morning, the Lancet Infectious Diseases has published research concluding that Echinacea can more than halve the risk of catching a common cold. This is the conclusion drawn by researchers from the School of Pharmacy at the University of Connecticut, who looked at 14 different studies on Echinacea. Overall, Echinacea was shown to decrease the odds of developing a cold by 58% and reduce the duration of colds by a day-and-a-half in people who were infected.
Echinacea reduced the likelihood of participants catching a cold naturally (i.e. in normal circumstances such as working with someone who has a cold) by 65%, and even where participants were inoculated directly with a rhinovirus, Echinacea reduced cold incidence by 35%.
Professor Ron Cutler of the University of London said that Echinacea, "decreases the severity of cough, headache and nasal congestion," if people have already caught a cold. He gave it as his opinion that, "people with impaired immune function might benefit from taking Echinacea during the winter months to prevent colds and flu."
The authors noted that more work was needed on the quality of the Echinacea products used. Bioforce would agree that the quality of the products used might explain why some Echinacea trials show disappointing results. A previous American investigation into Echinacea preparations found that 10% of those taken from health stores contained no measurable Echinacea. (Gilroy CM et al. Echinacea and truth in labelling. Arch Intern Med 2003; 163:699-704).
There have, however, been several positive trials on Echinacea in the last few years, including a trial that demonstrated the efficiency of Echinacea in the treatment of colds and flu, when it is used as soon as a cold starts. At 7 days, 95% of the subjects using Echinacea were free of symptoms compared with only 63% in the placebo group. In their paper, Goel and colleagues noted that less positive trials were probably due to, "the wide disparity in different preparations, lack of standardisation of products on the basis of active components and undefined dosing procedures." (Goel et al. J Clin Pharm Ther. 2004, 29 (1): 75 – 83.)
The positive results achieved by Goel involved an ethanolic extract (tincture) of Echinacea purpurea produced from freshly harvested plant material – the same specifications as Echinaforce, which has had a medicine's licence proving its safety and efficacy for more than 10 years.
Professor Cutler expressed the need for more work to show how Echinacea works; however, Goel has published Echinacea research showing a significant and sustained increase in the number of circulating total white blood cells, monocytes, neutrophils and NK cells, as well as an improved mopping up of free radicals, and deduced that this may have led to a faster resolution of the cold symptoms. (Goel et al. Phytother Res. 2005 Aug; 19 (8): 689-94.)
Bioforce has also produced research that shows a definite mechanism of action. In 2004 work published by Gertsch, in collaboration with the Clinical Trials Dept staff at Bioforce AG, pinpointed the action of alkylamides in modulating production of TNF- (Gertsch J et al. FEBS Letters 2004; 577: 563 – 569), and confirmed our opinion that Echinaforce is an immunomodulator rather than an immunostimulant.
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