Elderberry for colds and flu: what the reviews missed, and what a later trial found

Tue, 03 Nov 2026 06:00:00 +0700

A bottle of elderberry syrup makes two promises easy to blur together: don’t get sick, and get better sooner if you do. The evidence doesn’t support the first promise. There’s a tentative signal for the second in older small trials, but a later trial in people with confirmed flu didn’t find a benefit. That’s a less catchy answer than the label might suggest, and a more useful one. Wieland et al., 2021; Macknin et al., 2020.

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Elderberry for colds and flu: what the reviews missed, and what a later trial found