ELDERBERRY

ELDERBERRIES may make delicious, if uncommon, jams and pies – but the jury’s still out on whether they can cure the flu.

The number of proprietary elderberry products on the market has slowly grown in recent years, particularly in Europe. The berries contain high levels of vitamin C and flavonoids, plant pigment compounds that have shown antimicrobial activity in the lab. In the 1990s, Israeli researchers produced findings suggesting that the plant fought germs in humans too.

In one study, published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine in 1995, people living in an Israeli commune during a flu outbreak in 1993 were given either four tablespoons of a proprietary elderberry extract, Sambucol, or the same amount of a placebo syrup daily for three days. Both groups came down with the flu – but those who took the elderberry product recovered within two days, while the others recovered in six.

In 1999, the researchers tested the product during a flu outbreak in Norway. This time, the elderberry-treated group recovered in half the time it took the placebo group to recover: three to four days compared with seven to eight. The results were published in the Journal of International Medical Research in 2004.

In the U.S., Sambucol is sold in stores by supplement maker Nature’s Way. A number of copycat elderberry products are appearing on shelves, claiming that elderberry coats flu viruses to stop them from infecting cells. But there’s no evidence to back this up, and only Sambucol’s patented formula has been put to the test.

Though Sambucol touts itself as an immune booster (the company’s promotional materials suggest taking it daily), it’s only been studied in outbreaks, and there’s no evidence that it can prevent flu infection.