For people who don’t like its smell, the stuffiness of a common cold might be a way to avoid garlic. Whereas, for many people, garlic is something they take to avoid a cold. However, a new Cochrane review shows that garlic and colds have tended to avoid each other in research. There seems to be only one good trial and this failed to provide a clear answer.
Garlic has thousands of years of history as health enhancer and an intervention for various illnesses. It’s widely used today as a way to treat or prevent respiratory problems, including the common cold. And, laboratory research has shown that it can kill germs. The authors of the Cochrane review wanted to find out what research in humans had to say about its ability to kill or slow down the viruses responsible for the common cold. They found just one trial of satisfactory quality, and this was small.
146 people were randomized to take placebo or garlic every day for 12 weeks. The number and severity of the colds they contracted were counted, adding up to 24 in the garlic group and more than double this, 65, among the people taking placebo. The colds took an average of about five days to clear up in both groups: a little under this for garlic and a little over it for placebo. These results look promising for garlic but are insufficient to be sure. The authors of the Cochrane review identified some possible problems with the trial but even without these, its small size and the lack of a confirmatory study mean that it has not resolved the issue.
The authors conclude that there is not enough evidence to confirm or deny that garlic prevents the common cold, but that this is a topic worthy of research. The large numbers of people who buy garlic or garlic supplements thinking that it will protect them from getting a cold need access to reliable evidence on whether they are investing wisely. And researchers need to know whether garlic and its constituents are a good place to be looking in the search for the elusive cure for the common cold.
This Cochrane review is available in full at www.mrw.interscience.wiley.com/cochrane/clsysrev/articles/CD006206/frame.html
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September 7 2009