Study Backs Zinc to Prevent, Speed Recovery From Common Cold
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By Deborah Huso Feb 16th 2011 1:42PM
Categories: News
If you're like most people, chances are you rarely get through the winter without having at least one bout with the common cold.
There is no cure for the common cold, but many try to speed recovery, often by taking echinacea, vitamin C or some other natural remedy.
Zinc has long been touted as a cold "cure," but many studies have failed to back its effectiveness.
More recent trials, however, find that zinc may not only shorten the duration of a cold, but also prevent one.
Meenu Singh, of the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh, India, recently led a team that organized 13 therapeutic trials where 966 cold sufferers used zinc in the form of lozenges, tablets and syrup for at least five consecutive days to test its effect on the common cold.
The findings, which Singh and colleagues reported the Cochrane Systematic Review, were favorable in that zinc does appear to both prevent and shorten the duration of a cold.
Specifically, the study found that the duration of the common cold was reduced if subjects were given zinc within 24 hours of initial cold symptoms.
Researchers also monitored 394 participants taking zinc for at least five months in two trials to test zinc's prevention of the common cold. Zinc was found to reduce cold incidence, school absenteeism and the need for prescription of antibiotics in children when taken as a supplement for at least five months.
The study found cold patients taking zinc were also less likely to suffer from cold symptoms for more than 7 days.
But the study also found zinc lozenges can produce bothersome side effects, such as bad taste and nausea. As a result, study authors believe it is too early to recommend zinc for treatment of the common cold.
"This review strengthens the evidence for zinc as a treatment for the common cold," Singh told the BBC. "However, at the moment, it is still difficult to make a general recommendation, because we do not know very much about the optimum dose, formulation or length of treatment."
Proper dosing is important, professor Ronald Eccles, director of the Common Cold Centre at Cardiff University told BBC, because zinc can be toxic when taken excessively over long periods of time.
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