Does 'Airborne' Really Work?

Does 'Airborne' Really Work?

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Story Published: Oct 27, 2005 at 4:32 AM PDT

Story Updated: Aug 31, 2006 at 2:07 AM PDT

By Herb Weisbaum

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SEATTLE - Have you heard about Airborne? It's a dietary supplement created by a school teacher who, according to the ads, "was sick of catching colds in class."

Seems like everyone I know is taking this stuff or talking about it. Airborne is flying off store shelves. According to the New York Times, this new cold treatment racked up $17 million in sales last year, making it the country's 10th largest-selling multi-vitamin.

Each Airborne effervescent tablet contains herbs, antioxidants, electrolytes, amino acids, and vitamins, including vitamin A and C. The product never claims to treat a cold; that would require FDA approval. The ads just tell you to take it "at the first sign of a cold symptom, or before entering crowded environments, like airplanes, offices and schools."

"For the life of me I can't see any reason why it would work and it may be dangerous," says Dr. John Swartzberg, who heads the editorial board at the UC Berkeley Wellness Letter. "There is absolutely no science that shows that it helps, and the amount of vitamin A you get with it can be dangerous."

Here’s why: An adult should have no more than 10,000 units of vitamin A in a day. Each dose of Airborne has 5,000 units, and the package says to down a dose every 3 hours. As Dr. Swartzberg points out, that could easily lead to taking too much.

An overdose of vitamin A can cause serious health problems. The National Institutes of Health says, "Signs of acute toxicity include nausea and vomiting, headache, dizziness, blurred vision, and muscular un-coordination."

By the way, Airborne also contains Echinacea. There's been a lot of research done on Echinacea recently, and there it has not shown that Echinacea can treat or prevent colds.

The Airborne package says: "clinical trial data is available" at the company's Web site. But when we looked, we couldn't find any test data there.

I realize that some people swear by this stuff. I asked Dr. Swartzberg about that and he explained why you can’t base a decision on taking a medical product based on testimonials.

“We do double-blind controlled studies, because anecdotally things can sound wonderful but when you look at it compared to a placebo it has no affect at all. The natural history of a cold could be that you’ll be sick for 1, 2, 3 days or you’ll be sick for 7 or 10 days. So how do you know if you started taking Airborne, for example, and you get well in two or three days, that it worked? You have no idea.”

For more information:

No Sign That Echinacea Prevents, Treats Colds

Keeping Colds at Bay. Or Maybe Not

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