Zinc May Help Zap That Cold of Yours

If you caught a cold in Cleveland during October 1994 and your head throbbed and your nose ran and your eyes teared for more than four days, then you probably were not taking Cold-Eeze.

That was the conclusion published in the Annals of Internal Medicine following a randomized, double-blind placebo study of the citrus-flavored zinc lozenges’ effect on the exasperating symptoms of the common cold.

With cold season here, there is still no definitive cure. That said, it is interesting to note that in the Cleveland study--a protocol that included a patient raffle for a trip for two to the Bahamas--scientists may have come as close as they ever have to winning the cold war.

Asking half of their 100 test subjects to suck on citrus-flavored zinc lozenges supplied by the makers of Cold-Eeze, and giving the other half a zinc-tasting placebo, researchers at the Cleveland Clinic reported that patients who popped the patented Cold-Eeze formula got over their cold symptoms significantly sooner.

The study required all cold sufferers to dissolve the lozenges in their mouths every two hours (while awake) during the first full day of their colds. “The zinc group had significantly fewer days with nasal symptoms, throat symptoms, coughing, headache, hoarseness, nasal congestion, nasal drainage and sore throat,” concluded the clinic research team. (One in five of those patients also reported nausea as a side effect.)

Because more than 200 viruses can cause the common cold, looking for possible cures is expensive and complex. The biochemist who came up with the recipe for zinc-laced lozenges and well as the Cleveland researchers don’t know why the fruit-flavored drops work, but are guessing that zinc may somehow boost the immune system or at least stop cold viruses from multiplying.

But for Guy Quigley, president of Quigley Corp., the tiny Doylestown, Pa., company that sells the zinc formulation for $5 to $6 per 18-lozenge package, the question of why it works doesn’t seem to interest consumers as much as how well it works.

And does anybody at company headquarters ever call in sick--with a cold?

“Nope. They wouldn’t dare,” Quigley says.