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Echineca
Echinecea is a tall, daisy-like flower native to the American Great Plains. It was used medicinally by the Plains Indians, who first applied the mashed root to wounds, insect bites and stings, and snakebites. Echinacea was also used as mouthwash and to treat painful teeth and gums, while echinacea tea was used to treat colds, measles, mumps, and arthritis.
Although plains settlers adopted the plant, it remained a folk remedy until 1870. It was at this time that Dr. H. C. F. Meyer, a patent-medicine purveyor from Pawnee City, Nebraska, used it in his Meyer's Blood Purifier, promoting it as "an absolute cure" for rattlesnake bites and a host of other ills. Claims like those of Dr. Meyer gave patent medicines the name "snake oil."In the mid-1880s, echinacea came to the attention of researchers at the Eclectic Medical Institute in Cincinnati, a medical school specializing in the scientific study of medicinal herbs. After testing echinacea, the school found it to speed the healing of bee stings, chronic nasal congestion, leg ulcers, and a variety of infections including diphtheria, measles, chicken pox, scarlet fever, and influenza.
Word spread, and, in the days before penicillin and modern antibiotics, the early pharmaceutical industry adopted echinacea as an infection fighter. In fact, during the early 20th century, it would have been hard to find a medicine cabinet that didn't hold a tincture of echinacea.
Gradually, echinacea became a casualty of the war between the herbally inclined Eclectic physicians and orthodox physicians. The orthodox doctors favored the emergence of laboratory-synthesized drugs. By World War II, as modern antibiotics became available, echinacea's popularity waned. After 1950, it was virtually forgotten in this country.
German researchers were primarily responsible for continuing an interest in herbal medicine. In fact, from the 1950s through the 1980s, many studies -- almost all of them German -- showed that echinacea had notable immune-stimulating and infection-fighting properties. By the mid-1980s, Americans were well on their way to rediscovering this herb. Today, echinacea is a mainstay of herbal medicine.
Echinacea is an immune stimulant. When disease-causing germs attack the body, cells secrete compounds that attract infection-fighting white blood cells (macrophages) to the infected area. The macrophages (literally, "big eaters") then engulf and digest the invaders. Echinacea boosts the macrophages' ability to destroy germs.
Echinacea also energizes other important types of white blood cells, natural killer cells, and T-lymphocytes. The herb also increases secretion of interleukin 1, another component of the immune system.
The bottom line is that infections caused by viruses, bacteria, fungi, and protozoans heal faster with echinacea than without it.
Echinacea is most popular as a treatment for colds and flu. By the late 1990s, more than a dozen studies had investigated echinacea as a cold treatment. Most showed significant benefit: shorter, milder colds. There were also studies that showed no benefit -- enough to keep critics claiming that echinacea was worthless.
Recently, two mainstream physicians from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, together with a naturopath at Bastyr University (the naturopathic medical school near Seattle), analyzed every published study of echinacea for both the prevention and treatment of colds and flu.
For treatment of the common cold and flu, the researchers analyzed eight studies involving more than 1,000 participants. The trials were double-blind, meaning that some subjects received a placebo while the rest took echinacea. Those who used the herb took it in various preparations -- tablets, capsules, juice, or tincture -- and the preparations used all the immune-boosting parts of the plant: the root, leaves, and flowers.
All eight studies showed benefit. Six of the studies were statistically significant; two were not, but they showed a clear trend in the direction of benefit. Compared to untreated cold sufferers, the herb produced an average 50 percent reduction in symptom severity and a similar reduction in the number of days the subjects felt ill. The researchers concluded that echinacea does speed the treatment of the common cold.
Commission E, the German counterpart of the Food and Drug Administration, is an expert panel responsible for judging the safety and effectiveness of herbal medicines. They endorse echinacea as a treatment for colds and flu.
With regard to prevention, the researchers analyzed four studies with a total of 1,152 participants. Again, the trials were double-blind and used various preparations of all parts of the plant. None of these studies showed statistically significant preventive value. Based on this information, the reviewers' concluded that echinacea does not help prevent colds or flu.
It should be noted that traditional herbalists have never recommended echinacea as a preventive measure, only as a treatment for infectious illnesses.
In the cold-treatment studies that showed the most benefit, participants began taking echinacea as soon as they felt the first twinges of a cold or flu coming on. It was taken several times a day when symptoms were worse, and less often when there was noted improvement.
Finally, echinacea has been shown to help treat recurrent vaginal yeast infections. In a German study, 203 women with these annoying infections were treated with either a standard pharmaceutical anti-yeast cream or the cream supplemented by oral doses of echinacea. After six months, 60 percent of the women treated with the antifungal cream alone experienced recurrences. Among those also treated with the echinacea supplement, the figure was only 16 percent, a highly significant difference.
All educational programs conducted by Ohio State University Extension are available to clientele on a nondiscriminatory basis without regard to race, color, creed, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, gender, age, disability or Vietnam-era veteran status.
Keith L. Smith, Associate Vice President for Ag. Admin. and Director, OSU Extension TDD No. 800-589-8292 (Ohio only) or 614-292-1868
Revised February, 2002