The Boston Globe Cure for the common cold is just out of reach
Judy Foreman, October 25, 1999
" ...Outside the mainstream pharmaceutical establishment, researchers at Gel Tech, LLC in Woodland Hills, Calif., have already begun marketing a nasal spray called Zicam, which retails nationwide for $10 to $13. It is not approved as a drug by the US Food and Drug Administration, though it makes drug-like claims; it is marketed as a homeopathic remedy, which the FDA does not approve or disapprove, but keeps loose track of. The product has been in the works since 1995, says one of its creators, physiologist Charles Hensley. It is a form of ionized zinc that he thinks may work by binding to the same tiny portion of a cold virus that the ICAM decoy molecule latches onto. The problem is there is only Gel Tech's word to go by because there are no published studies. For what it's worth, Hensley says the company has studied 104 people and found that Zicam reduces the duration of cold symptoms from 9 days to one and a half. Frankly, that sounds too good to be true."(!) |
