Common cold

Evidence-graded topics and articles tagged Common cold.

Topics

• Echinacea — Echinacea may modestly reduce colds and antibiotic use in children, but adult trials found little or no shorter-cold benefit.
• Elderberry — Standardised elderberry extracts may shorten colds slightly, but the evidence is small and limited.
• Honey — Small trials suggest honey eases acute cough in children a little better than no treatment or placebo, with most of the benefit in the first three days.
• Vitamin C — Taken every day, vitamin C shortens colds by about 8% in adults and 14% in children and makes them less severe - a 2023 meta-analysis found severity fell 15%.
• Zinc — Zinc lozenges taken at the start of a cold shorten the illness by roughly two to three days in randomised trials.