Does gargling ward off colds?

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

Japanese researchers think that gargling with cold water can prevent you from getting a cold.
We'd all like to know a good way of avoiding catching a cold. A team at Kyoto University, Japan, think they've come up with a simple solution - gargling with cold water. They had 387 healthy volunteers gargle each day with either cold water or an antiseptic, or not to gargle at all.

The volunteers were followed up for 60 days or until they developed an upper respiratory tract infection - whichever happened first. In all, 130 subjects developed a cold, sore throat or similar problem. There was no difference in infection rate between the controls and the antiseptic garglers. But it seemed that the water garglers had a 30 per cent decreased risk of infection, compared with the controls. It is not clear how gargling with water might prevent infection - it may merely be a placebo effect or perhaps it clears the throat of the cold virus before it can spread.

Source
American Journal of Preventive Medicine November 2005

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