Echinacea doesn’t stop kids’ colds, but it may fend off future sniffles

Echinacea is thought to rev up the immune system, helping the body beat back viral invasions. Adults have long relied on it to ease cold symptoms. Many give it to their children.

But a new study of the herb’s effects on kids has found that it neither cut the duration of their colds nor lessened their symptoms.

Researchers studied 707 upper respiratory infections in more than 400 otherwise healthy kids ages 2 to 11 who were seen either in traditional or alternative medical practices. The youngsters received either the herb in liquid form or a placebo to be taken at the first sign of a cold and continued as long as they felt ill, up to 10 days, over a four-month period.

Not only did echinacea fail to make a dent in their illnesses, but it also produced more skin rashes than the placebo.

The researchers were intrigued by one positive finding: Echinacea seemed to reduce the number of subsequent colds. It’s possible, they wrote, that the echinacea boosted kids’ immune systems too late to mitigate the colds for which it was given, “but provided a window of protection” against additional colds.

The study, from researchers at the University of Washington and Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center, both in Seattle; Bastyr University in Kenmore, Wash.; Mercer Island Pediatric Associates in Mercer Island, Wash.; and the National College of Naturopathic Medicine in Portland, Ore., appears in the Dec. 3 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Assn.

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Jane E. Allen