Taking ginseng supplements through the winter appears to help the immune system fight off colds, report Canadian researchers today. The team from the University of Western Ontario and the University of Alberta found that when people who usually suffered colds took a standardized extract of the roots of North American ginseng, they had significantly less colds than a placebo group, and less severe symptoms. Only one in 10 of those given daily doses of the supplement suffered two or more colds during four months including winter, compared with almost a quarter of those taking placebos. “Our results can be compared with those for many of the common antiviral drugs such as rimantadine, amantadine, zanamivir or oseltamivir for the prevention or treatment of influenza,” said the researchers in today’s issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal (173, issue 9).
