Cure for the common cold
By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Staff Writer
Sniffle around University of Hawai'i assistant professor Amy C. Brown, and she will whip out a bottle labeled "Cold Block," and suggest you try her concoction.
Cory Lum • The Honolulu Advertiser
In less than a day she is betting your fledgling cold will be gone.
Amy Brown with her Cold Block herbal treatment.
"I think I've discovered the cure for the common cold," said the researcher, who works in the UH Department of Human Nutrition, Food and Animal Sciences in the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources.
"I've blocked my own colds and blocked colds in 18 out of 20 people within 24 hours of getting the symptoms," said Brown.
She has blocked her brother's colds, friends' colds, and an oncoming cold in the first stages of attacking the sinus passages of Dr. Jon Ruckle, associate medical director of Radiant Research Honolulu. The Hawai'i firm specializes in clinical studies required by the Food and Drug Administration to approve new medications.
"I think she has a good idea," said Ruckle, who perused Brown's research, looked at the ingredients in her formula, and pronounced all of them safe. "I'm optimistic the product will work."
So is Andrew "Andy" Hashimoto, her college dean, who has tried the remedy and said it stopped a doozer of an oncoming cold.
"Usually I only get a cold once every three or four years," says Hashimoto, "but when I do it lays me up for a week. This time it was much milder and moved on to a scratchy throat and a runny nose ... It seemed to work."
Cold Block is not echinecea, said Brown.
Not zinc. Not a cold tablet.
Instead, there are antivirals in the concoction that she first brewed up four years ago when she felt a cold coming on at a time when she was facing a looming book deadline. She just couldn't afford to get that cold so, using intuition and her knowledge of nutrition, she put together items from a health food store.
"There's nothing here that seems bizarre," said Ruckle, an internist trained at the Mayo Clinic who has been doing full-time research since 1995, as he looked over a rough approximation of Brown's formula.
"All of the ingredients are things that are used as part of herbal remedies. These things have been used medicinally for hundreds of years."
Although there are about 200 viruses responsible for causing infections that behave like the common cold, Brown said her discovery only attacks those caused by rhinoviruses, or those accompanied by a sore and scratchy throat. Her research indicates that's around 60 percent of colds.
"It doesn't boost the immune system," she said. "It's no good for the flu. It's only good with colds with sore throats."
To reach assistant professor Amy C. Brown, call 732-1402
At first Brown was skeptical of her own discovery. "I thought it was a coincidence," she said. "Then (when it worked again a year later when she began getting her next annual cold) I thought it was positive thinking. It was only the third year that I thought I might have something."
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Sore throat?
A local medical center is expected to consider in the next two months whether or not to embark on a joint double-blind clinical study with Brown to get scientifically verifiable data on how well her concoction works. She needs those studies if any pharmaceutical company is going to be interested in producing it, she said.
But even if a clinical trial is not handled through an institution, she's gearing up to do such a study herself, making sure the approximately 80 participants she needs will randomly receive the real thing or a placebo.
"I've got to get this published and give the UH credit before someone else does it," she said.
Until then, Brown says, she'll drive anywhere, anytime, to help someone stop a cold in order to amass statistics to support her claims about her concoction.
"I need the help of the people in Hawai'i," she said. "But they have to get to me within 12-24 hours of a sore throat. The key is the tickly sensation in the back of the throat."
Call her, she says, and she'll bring her medicine to your sniffly nose as fast as she can. And, she hopes, will block your cold.
