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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America logoLink to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
. 1971 Nov;68(11):2678–2681. doi: 10.1073/pnas.68.11.2678

The Significance of the Evidence about Ascorbic Acid and the Common Cold

Linus Pauling 1
PMCID: PMC389499  PMID: 4941984

Abstract

Only four independent double-blind studies have been reported of the effect of ascorbic acid regularly ingested in daily amounts more than 100 mg, in comparison with a placebo, in decreasing the incidence and integrated morbidity of the common cold for subjects exposed to cold viruses in the ordinary way and without colds when the test period began. A statistical analysis of these four studies leads to rejection of the null hypothesis that ascorbic acid has no more protective power than the placebo at the 99.86% level of confidence for the incidence of colds and the 99.9978% level of confidence for the integrated morbidity.

Keywords: vitamin C, double-blind studies, statistical significance

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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