Researchers Confirm That Vitamin C Heightens Resistence to Common Cold

Researchers writing in the January 5 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine report that taking Vitamin C cannot prevent the common cold but may make the troublesome illness shorter and more bearable.

The results of a 14-week-long study at a Navajo boarding school show that the students taking large daily doses of Vitamin C were sick an average of 32 per cent fewer days than those students who were administered look-alike placebos.

Dr. John L. Coulehan, head of the research team at Fort Defiance Hospital in Fort Defiance, Ariz., said yesterday that he was not prepared to recommend that people regularly take Vitamin C to avoid colds because doctors "just don't know how it works."

However, Coulehan said he would not dissuade anyone who was set on taking several grams of the vitamin every day. "It's harmless and may do a lot of good, especially for people who frequently get colds," he said.

A pharmacist at Chester A. Baker, Inc., in Holyoke Center said yesterday that there are no governmental restrictions on the purchase of Vitamin C. A bottle of 100 500-mg. pills sold for $3.25.

The Arizona research was a so-called "double blind" study on over 600 school children. The doctors gave half the students daily doses of one to two grams of Vitamin C and the other half placebos--tablets that looked and tasted like the vitamins but contained no active ingredtents.

The doctors said the project was designed to test the hypothesis that Vitamin C could greatly increase a person's resistance to respiratory illness, a theory Nobel laureate Linus C. Pauling popularized.

Specifically, the researchers found "there was no difference in the number of episodes" of illness but that the difference in length and severity of respiratory illnesses within the Vitamin C group was "highly significant."

Younger children on the vitamin missed an average of 28 per cent fewer school days and older youngsters spent 34 per cent fewer days ill than those in the control group. By observing in class children with mild colds, the researchers found that the younger students experienced 27 per cent fewer symptoms like cough, runny nose and watery eyes. Only the older girls, however, showed any decrease in cold symptoms.

Coulehan said that he is continuing the research and will soon experiment with a larger number of students over a longer period of time.