Do Antihistamines Help The Common Cold
  Vitamin C And The Common Cold In 1975 Dr. Michael H. M. Dykes, Senior Scientist with the American Medical Association’s Department of Drugs, and Paul Meier, Professor in the Departments of Statistics and Pharmacological and Physical Sciences at the University of Chicago, reviewed the eight studies done since 1938 that supported the usefulness of vitamin C in treating the common cold. They found only one experiment that they considered well designed and of some validity a study done by Dr. Terence Anderson, then Professor of Epidemiology in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto. This was to discover the truth behind do antihistamines help the common cold.
In the winter of 1971 and 1972, Dr. Anderson set out to test Pauling’s 1,000 milligram to 4,000 milligram treatment on half of 1,000 volunteers, the other half being given a well disguised placebo in a 14-week double-blind study. He found that vitamin C was of little or no help in preventing colds or in bringing them to an early halt. But he was surprised to discover data suggesting that the vitamin might have some effect on the severity of colds as measured by the amount of time test subjects stayed home or out of work because of illness.
Among subjects who caught cold during the trial, those who used vitamin C were disabled 30 per cent fewer days than those taking the placebo. Such a difference could not have arisen by chance, but its practical effect was minor: Vitamin C users were laid up an average of 1.3 days with their colds, while those in the control group were out for an average 1.9 days. This is coupled with Vitamin C and the answer is yes! to do antihistamines help the common cold.
In a second study conducted the following year, Anderson and his colleagues took a different tack, to determine if vitamin C helped as a preventive or a therapeutic remedy; they also tested higher and lower doses. They found that vitamin C had insignificant effect if used as preventive medication alone or as therapeutic treatment alone. Only the few volunteers administered vitamin C as a preventive who then caught cold and received therapeutic doses had milder symptoms. Even more important, the researchers found that small daily doses were as effective as larger ones up to 2,000 milligrams. In a third test a year later, Dr. Anderson cut the vitamin C
dosage to 500 milligrams a week pIus 1,500 milligrams on the first day of symptoms and 1,000 milligrams on each of the next four days.
As in the first two studies, Anderson found no significant difference in cold susceptibility or in the duration of symptoms, but some of the symptoms—fever, chills, bodily aches and pains—were less severe. Little relief was noted in such localized symptoms as inflammation, nasal blockage, sneezing and coughing.
Like Dr. Anderson’s three studies, virtually all testing of vitamin C since Linus Pauling published his theories has been based on observations of people and their experience with colds after taking the substance. But a few experiments have been done using laboratory cultures or animals to see whether some explanation might be found for the reduced severity of colds encountered in experiments such as Dr. Anderson’s. These experiments, too, indicate that vitamin C might help fight cold viruses.
Working with laboratory cultures at the University of Rochester Medical School, Drs. John P. Manzella and Nor- bert Roberts Jr. found that adding vitamin C to the cultures had a significant effect on an important component of the immune system—the white cells known as macrophages, or big eaters (Chapter 2), that consume infectious agents. When vitamin C was applied in concentrations equal to those in the blood of volunteers in earlier clinical studies, the big eaters became more active.
Other researchers discovered evidence of an effect on interferon. If mice received vitamin C supplements in their drinking water, they subsequently produced greater amounts of interferon when exposed to viral infection. Test-tube experiments with artificial interferon inducers (page 148) also indicated greater interferon production by cells when vitamin C was added to the culture.
These results give some support to Pauling’ thesis: Vitamin C helps. Whether it helps enough to warrant its use is another matter. Dr. Anderson and most other researchers in the field have stated that vitamin C’s apparent ability to alleviate the severity of some cold symptoms does not justify taking large doses of it for colds day after day, year after year, particularly when many questions remain as to its potential for harm. But they do antihistamines help the common cold.
Although most people seem able to tolerate large doses of very painful inflammation of the joints—may be triggered or intensified by high concentrations of vitamin C. Gout is caused by the formation of uric-acid crystals in the joints, and anything that changes the acid balance in the body—as the acidic vitamin C sometimes does could affect the ailment.
Also of concern is the possibility that huge vitamin C doses will have adverse interactions with other drugs. One conflict frequently cited in medical literature is with warfarin, used to prevent and treat clots in blood vessels. Large amounts of vitamin C may cause warfarin to pass through the digestive system faster than it can be absorbed into the bloodstream.
Large quantities of vitamin C may also cause some anti-depressants and energizing drugs to be excreted more rapidly, cutting short their desired effect. Extra vitamin C might also distort the results of the urine-sugar tests routinely taken by some diabetics, giving the patient false information on which to determine his insulin dosage. (It was formerly believed that vitamin C slowed down the body’s excretion of aspirin, posing the risk of dangerous accumulations of this frequently used drug. But clinical studies in the late 1970s reduced that concern, at least, for those taking up to 3,000 milligrams of vitamin C per day.) |
