Half the people who suffer from respiratory illness after long-haul flights could benefit from the use of the herbal medicine echinacea, according to a study from Griffith University.
The 170 participants travelled on return economy class flights from Australia to America, Europe and Africa and had a stop over of less than 12 hours.
Half of the participants took alkylamide standardised echinacea tablets during their travel period, while the other half took a placebo tablet.
Treatment started 14 days before flying overseas and was completed 14 days after returning to Australia. Participants were questioned in three separate surveys about their upper respiratory symptoms, jet lag duration, headache, sleep disturbances and cold sores.
Both groups experienced respiratory illness during travel but only 43% of those taking echinacea tablets showed symptoms of respiratory problems worth treating immediately after travel, compared with 57% of those taking the placebo tablet.
Four weeks later, only 25% of people taking echinacea showed symptoms worth treating, compared with 39% of those on the placebo.
Grendelus Malleolus
Senior Nerd
Were there controls over the distribution of the placebo and the echinacea based on destination and season of travel? Were they each on a unique flight or were some participants grouped on aircraft?
So many potential confounding factors - specially with such a small group. I look forward to reading the paper for greater clarification at some point.
Tom Hennessy
Retired
Quote: people who suffer from respiratory illness after long-haul flights
Answer: The respiratory illness is due to the increased red blood cell production from the flight. The respiratory disorder is the same disorder those who abuse erythropoietin manifest. It is the same respiratory illness which is diagnosed as pneumonia by the medical community. Simple increased red blood cells. The cabin pressure for altitude is higher than what is considered safe by some , hypothesising it is due to the decreased life of an airplane when the cabin pressure is kept high.
"8000 ft has been accepted as the maximum operational cabin pressure altitude in the airline industry."
"On the basis of our findings, we conclude that maintaining a cabin
altitude of 6,000 feet or lower (equivalent to a barometric pressure
of 609 mm Hg or higher) on long-duration commercial flights will
reduce the discomfort among passengers,"
Andrew Pengilley
Doctor
A confidence interval of the difference would be more convincing that all the text. Assuming thats 85 in each arm, with gives a difference between 48 and 37 people who got unwell, it does not appear to be a statistically significant difference (p=0.12). It is nice that the study is blinded to treatment, but randomised for travel? Clustering is a big problem to because people travelling together are more likely to have infections or not due to sharing exposures.
Grendelus Malleolus
Senior Nerd
Andrew - yeah this was my thought also. I wonder sometimes over the timing of announcements like this. The paper has not yet been presented at its intended conference so we are left with only a fairly brief analysis. Meanwhile the media, and supplement producers and sellers can seize on this as 'evidence' before it has even been evaluated by the scientific community.
Grendelus Malleolus
Senior Nerd
For those interested in the detail - I think this is the paper: http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ecam/2012/417267/