Doubt cast on vitamin C as cold cure
Daily vitamin C may not ward off colds
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Wednesday, 18, Jul 2007 10:51
Taking daily vitamin C supplements is unlikely to prevent people from catching a common cold, a new review has concluded.
In the 1970s Nobel Prize-winning chemist Linus Pauling advised people to take 1,000mg of the vitamin daily and since then it has been assumed by some to help boost the immune system.
But after researchers analysed 30 studies involving more than 11,000 people who took daily doses of at least 200mm of vitamin C they found that as well as being unlikely to prevent colds, vitamin C supplements also do little to reduce the length or severity of a cold.
But the supplement was found by the Australian National University and the University of Helsinki scientists to be beneficial for people exposed to periods of high stress, such as skiers, marathon runners and soldiers on sub-Arctic exercise.
Writing in The Cochrane Library, they claim that the benefit for colds is so slight that it is not worth the effort or the expense.
"It doesn't make sense to take vitamin C 365 days a year to lessen the chance of catching a cold," said co-author Harri Hemila.
But Dr Hemila, who has studied the vitamin for 25 years, said that more studies need to be conducted on vitamin C and common colds in children and vitamin C and pneumonia.
While he concludes vitamin C is not a universal cure, Dr Hemila said that it is not useless either.
"Pauling was overly optimistic, but he wasn't completely wrong," he added.