What are the effects of vitamin C on the duration and severity of the common cold?

Introduction: The common cold causes great morbidity throughout the world and there are no effective therapeutic agents against it. There is a belief that consuming vitamin C during a cold episode would help reduce duration and severity of symptoms. However, there is controversy about this claim.

Does vitamin C prevent the common cold?

Introduction: The common cold is one of the most common diseases. It is generally believed that the consumption of vitamin C prevents its appearance, but the actual efficacy of this measure is controversial.

Methods: To answer this question we used Epistemonikos, the largest database of systematic reviews in health, which is maintained by screening multiple information sources, including MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane, among others.