http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/2001/10/01/FFX6WSBQ7SC.html
Study rebuts 'myth' of vitamin C cold cure The Age 1 OCtober 2001 By MARY-ANNE TOY HEALTH EDITOR Monday 1 October 2001 The theory that high doses of vitamin C can cure the common cold - first advocated in 1970 by dual Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling - is a myth, according to an Australian study. The study's leader, Robert Douglas, of the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, at the Australian National University, said he had stopped taking vitamin C on the strength of the finding. The study involved 400 volunteers from the ANU in Canberra. It found that vitamin C taken at the onset of a cold had no effect on the duration or severity of symptoms in healthy adults. Professor Douglas said he had conducted his study because results from previous ones had been inconclusive. "It was pretty clear that vitamin C couldn't prevent people from getting colds, but there was still a question mark over whether it did something to treat colds," Professor Douglas said. "There have been four other studies with ambiguous findings, but there was nothing ambiguous about our study." But groups such as F H Faulding, the market leader in health supplements, and the Centre for Complementary Medicine, said the study was flawed because participants did not take strong enough doses for a long enough period. The 400 volunteers were randomised to receive one of four interventions - a "placebo" dose of 0.03 grams a day of vitamin C; one gram a day; three grams a day, or three grams a day of the vitamin plus other additives - without knowing what dose they were taking. Volunteers were given bottles, tablets and a "respiratory event card" to fill out if they began to get a cold. If a volunteer had at least two symptoms for a minimum of four hours (such as a sore or scratchy throat, nasal congestion or discharge, a headache or stinging eyes) they were to start the tablets as soon as possible, preferably within four hours. They were asked to continue the tablets for the next two days and record their symptoms on the card. One hundred and forty-nine participants returned records of 184 cold episodes. The study, published today in the Medical Journal of Australia, found no significant differences in any measure of cold duration or severity between the four medication groups. The placebo group had the shortest duration of nasal, systemic and overall cold symptoms but the difference was not statistically significant. However, Marc Cohen, director of the Centre for Complementary Medicine at Monash University, said the study was seriously flawed. A therapeutic dose should be at least five grams a day; participants were too slow to take their first dose (average time between onset and first dose was 13 hours) and vitamin C was taken for only just over two days. Dr Cohen said there were no conclusive studies about whether vitamin C helped colds, and it was frustrating that the new study had such major flaws. Naturopath and pharmacist Lesley Braun, a consultant to Faulding, said the study only proved that a particular protocol (1-3 grams of vitamin C taken for just over two days) was ineffective. "This is not to say that other protocols don't work," Ms Braun said. American chemist Linus Pauling, who was twice awarded the Nobel Prize for science, sparked the vitamin supplement craze when he published the book Vitamin C and the Common Cold in 1970 and Cancer and Vitamin C in 1979. Australians bought $27 million worth of vitamin C last year from pharmacies and grocery stores.
