The herbal remedy echinacea is no better than a placebo at stifling the sneezes, sore throat and fever of common cold sufferers, a study suggests.
In the UW-Madison study of 719 people aged 12 to 80 with early cold symptoms, participants were randomly assigned to receive either no pill, a pill that they knew contained echinacea, or a pill that could be either echinacea or a sugar pill.