GAINESVILLE---Echinacea, an herbal cold remedy used for centuries, does, in fact, stimulate the immune system, a University of Florida researcher has found.
In the first clinical study of the popular herb's effects on healthy men, UF nutritional scientist Susan Percival found that echinacea stimulated white blood cells, which fight infection.
"I expected to find what I found," said Percival, a researcher in UF's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. "The literature is scarce, mostly German or Chinese, but cell culture and animal studies indicated this would happen.
"So that's good. If for years we've been saying echinacea does this, it's nice to know that it does."
Percival now will expand and repeat her preliminary study with the goal of one day submitting a full-scale study proposal to the National Institutes of Health.
For centuries, echinacea, commonly known as purple coneflower, has been used by cold sufferers who believed it would reduce the severity and duration of colds because it boosts the immune system. But until now there has been little scientific evidence of whether it worked in people, said Percival, whose research focuses on immune function.
With the recent surge in interest in herbal and botanical remedies in the United States, the NIH formed the Office of Dietary Supplements to foster better research into the popular, but largely unproved, remedies.
In her preliminary study, Percival gave 10 healthy, college-age men an echinacea supplement for four days, taking measurements of immunity on day one and day four. In just four days, she found a stimulation of the immune system in the form of a threefold increase in the ability of white blood cells to kill bacteria.
She cautions that her findings do not support the practice of taking echinacea regularly, in the absence of cold symptoms.
"When people are told it boosts the immune system, that's something they
believe should be consumed at all times," Perciva
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Contact: Cindy Spence
crsp@gnv.ifas.ufl.edu
352-392-1773
University of Florida
3-Mar-1999