Vitamin C in high doses in the treatment of the common cold

This is a controlled trial on vitamin C for the common cold. This is not available through the web and is therefore made available here.

Summary: In order to test vitamin C in the treatment of common cold, 45 patients (25 women and 20 men) received 6.0 g of vitamin C daily per os, when they showed the first symptoms of the disease. The treatment lasted five days regardless of the prospective results. The duration of the cold was significantly reduced when the treatment began within 24 hours of the first symptoms and in several patients it even did not develop fully. Patients felt quite well the day after the beginning of treatment. Results were not so good when there was a delay and the medication started on the second or third day of illness. At that time we observed that the cold often was complicated by secondary bacterial infections. Finally it seems important to report that after the end of the research we continue to use the same vitamin C dosage obtaining consistently the same results.