Study: Echinacea not likely the cold remedy it’s made out to be

The herb echinacea might trim half a day off a typical cold and reduce symptoms by about 10 percent, but the slight help found in a UW-Madison study could have occurred by chance. “It suggests some minor benefit but does not prove it by any means,” said Dr. Bruce Barrett, a UW-Madison family physician who led the study and published the results Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine.