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Symptoms of the Common Cold

Symptoms of the common cold refer to the actual symptoms experienced during sickness, rather than the risk of developing URTIs or the length of sickness. Reducing symptoms of sickness tends to make the process to health more tolerable despite not actually affecting the healing rate.

Kamal
Research analysis lead by Kamal Patel
All content reviewed by Examine.com Team. Published:
Last Updated:

Human Effect Matrix

The Human Effect Matrix looks at human studies (it excludes animal and in vitro studies) to tell you what supplements affect symptoms of the common cold
Grade Level of Evidence
Robust research conducted with repeated double-blind clinical trials
Multiple studies where at least two are double-blind and placebo controlled
Single double-blind study or multiple cohort studies
Uncontrolled or observational studies only
Level of Evidence
? The amount of high quality evidence. The mo re evidence, the more we can trust the results.
Outcome Magnitude of effect
? The direction and size of the supplement's impact on each outcome. Some supplements can have an increasing effect, others have a decreasing effect, and others have no effect.
Consistency of research results
? Scientific research does not always agree. HIGH or VERY HIGH means that most of the scientific research agrees.
Notes
grade-b Echinacea - Very High See all 4 studies
Insufficient evidence to support modification of symptoms of sickness
grade-c Pelargonium sidoides Notable - See study
All symptoms appear to be reduced with treatment of the standard dose of EPs7630. With symptom reduction after five days and the amount of persons with full resolution of symptoms being more than doubled relative to placebo.
grade-c Garlic Minor Very High See 2 studies
Similar to symptoms of sickness in general and the length of sickness, the therapeutic efficacy of garlic appears to be modest at best.

All comparative evidence is now gathered in our ​A-to-Z Supplement Reference.

The evidence for each separate supplement is still freely available ​here.

This page is regularly updated, to include the most recently available clinical trial evidence.

Each member of our research team is required to have no conflicts of interest, including with supplement manufacturers, food companies, and industry funders. The team includes nutrition researchers, registered dietitians, physicians, and pharmacists. We have a strict editorial process.

This page features 0 references. All factual claims are followed by specifically-applicable references. Click here to see the full set of references for this page.

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