Dataset Information

Self-Care Practices for Common Colds by Primary Care Patients: Study Protocol of a European Multicenter Survey-The COCO Study.

ABSTRACT: Background. Self-care for common colds is frequent, yet little is known about the spectrum, regional differences, and potential risks of self-care practices in patients from various European regions. Methods/Design. We describe the study protocol for a cross-sectional survey in 27 primary care centers from 14 European countries. At all sites, 120 consecutive adult patients, who visit their general practitioner for any reason, filled in a self-administered 27-item questionnaire. This addresses patients' self-care practices for common colds. Separately, the subjective level of discomfort when having a common cold, knowing about the diseases' self-limited nature, and medical and sociodemographic data are requested. Additionally, physicians are surveyed on their use of and recommendations for self-care practices. We are interested in investigating which self-care practices for common colds are used, whether the number of self-care practices used is influenced by knowledge about the self-limited nature of the disease, and the subjective level of discomfort when having a cold and to identify potential adverse interactions with chronic physician-prescribed medications. Further factors that will be considered are, for example, demographic characteristics, chronic conditions, and sources of information for self-care practices. All descriptive and analytical statistics will be performed on the pooled dataset and stratified by country and site. Discussion. To our knowledge, COCO is the first European survey on the use of self-care practices for common colds. The study will provide new insight into patients' and general practitioners' self-care measures for common colds across Europe.

SUBMITTER: Weltermann BM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4572439 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Self-Care Practices for Common Colds by Primary Care Patients: Study Protocol of a European Multicenter Survey-The COCO Study.

Weltermann Birgitta M BM Gerasimovska-Kitanovska Biljana B Thielmann Anika A Chambe Juliette J Lingner Heidrun H Pirrotta Enzo E Buczkowski Krzysztof K Tekiner Selda S Czachowski Slawomir S Edirne Tamer T Zielinski Andrzej A Yikilkan Hülya H Koskela Tuomas T Petrazzuoli Ferdinando F Hoffman Robert D RD Petek Šter Marija M Guede Fernández Clara C Uludağ Ayşegül A Hoffmann Kathryn K Mevsim Vildan V Kreitmayer Pestic Sanda S

Evidence-based complementary and alternative medicine : eCAM 20150902

Background. Self-care for common colds is frequent, yet little is known about the spectrum, regional differences, and potential risks of self-care practices in patients from various European regions. Methods/Design. We describe the study protocol for a cross-sectional survey in 27 primary care centers from 14 European countries. At all sites, 120 consecutive adult patients, who visit their general practitioner for any reason, filled in a self-administered 27-item questionnaire. This addresses pa ...[more]

PMID: 26421048

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Project description:BackgroundRandomized trials have shown that vitamin C shortens the duration of common colds. Some trials reported greater effects on severe cold symptoms compared with mild symptoms. This review systematically compares the effects of vitamin C on severe and mild common cold symptoms.MethodsWe included all placebo-controlled trials of orally administered vitamin C in doses of at least 1 g/day for the common cold for people in good health at baseline. The analysis was restricted to trials which reported both the total duration of the common cold, and the severity of the common cold measured using severity scales, the duration of more severe stages of the cold, or proxies for severe colds such as days indoors. Findings were pooled using the inverse variance, fixed effect options of the metacont function of the R package meta to calculate the ratio of means estimate.ResultsFifteen comparisons from 10 trials which reported both mild and severe symptoms were identified. All trials were randomized and double-blind. Compared to placebo, vitamin C significantly decreased the severity of the common cold by 15% (95% CI 9-21%). The direct comparison of the effect of vitamin C on mild and severe symptoms was limited to five comparisons which found that vitamin C had a significant benefit on the duration of severe symptoms. In this subset, there was a significant difference in the size of the effect of vitamin C on the overall duration of colds versus the duration of severe colds (P = 0.002), and vitamin C had no significant effect on the duration of mild symptoms.ConclusionsThe common cold is the leading cause of acute morbidity and a major cause of absenteeism from work and school. However, absenteeism is dependent on the severity of symptoms. The finding that vitamin C may have a greater effect on more severe measures of the common cold is therefore important. Further research on the therapeutic effects of vitamin C on the common cold should measure outcomes of differing levels of severity.

Dataset Information

Self-Care Practices for Common Colds by Primary Care Patients: Study Protocol of a European Multicenter Survey-The COCO Study.

Publications

Self-Care Practices for Common Colds by Primary Care Patients: Study Protocol of a European Multicenter Survey-The COCO Study.

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