Vitamin C

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
1

From this post

Some of you might be aware of the Cochrane Collaboration, which conducts systematic reviews of previous studies into various medical questions. They take steps to remove (or at least identify) poor quality trials (before looking at the results of those trials to avoid bias) and basically try to get around the problem of many different studies showing different results by means of nasty scary maths which I don’t understand. Their work has informed and changed medical practice around the world.

They have performed metanalyses of the information on vitamin C and various diseases including colds and asthma (I won’t give a separate link - just type vitamin C into the search bar). I’d better not directly quote but n=11350, very slight duration in severity and duration of common cold symptoms, but so small that the usefulness is doubtful. However in participants exposed to short periods of extreme physical/cold stress it reduced cold risk by 50% which can’t be bad. Once cold has started therapeutic (rather than prophylactic) use has no effect.

2

Nothing to add or debate.

I just wanted to congratulate Cecil for being able to check into a 1997 review of six major studies in the British Journal of Nutrition when responding in a May 26, 1978 SD column. :smiley:

3

Some of the earlier columns were updated when they appeared in the Straight Dope books. Others were updated when they were first republished on AOL.

The original column dates were left on them as they moved through the various forms of media over the years and so sometimes Cecil appears he can transcend space and time. Perhaps he can. :slight_smile: