NBC News, November 5, 1997, THE COLD WAR Tom Brocaw---Now to our series "The Cold War". How good are the hottest treatments for the common cold? Tonight, the story of zinc which began as a labor of love but ended up a multimillion dollar business. Here's NBC's Robert Bazell.

Bazell---The zinc story began in 1979 in the kitchen of George Eby, an amateur inventor, who was searching desperately searching for new treatments for his daughter Karen who was suffering with leukemia. One day Karen was too weak to swallow a pill her father had made containing the metal zinc. So she dissolved it in her mouth. To everyone's surprise, the cold she had disappeared.

George Eby---When you see a kid with leukemia who has no immune system recover from a medically diagnosed cold in two hours, it gets your attention.

Bazell---Today Karen is cured of the leukemia. Her father did take out several patents on zinc lozenges as cold treatment. The Quigley Corporation in Doylestown, Pennsylvania now manufactures the lozenges under Eby's patent and sold $26 million worth the last cold season. (picture of wrapped Cold-Eeze lozenges tumbling off assembly line).

Guy Quigley---It has the possibility of eliminating the cold almost immediately. That's what we have found in our first year in this particular business.

Bazell---Of course that's the opinion of the company owner, but in fact, there is some serious research carried out in the prestigious Cleveland Clinic. When volunteers, all hospital workers, felt a cold coming on, half were given zinc. The other half got a placebo, a lozenge with everything but the zinc. Mercee Lechter didn't know what she received.

Lechter, a nurse---I think the symptoms did go away. I don't know if that was what I thought they did, but some did go away.

Dr. Sherif Mossad, Cleveland Clinic---About six of the symptoms of the common cold improved with zinc treatment compared with the placebo.

Bazell---So people ask me now, do zinc lozenges help with the common cold? What do you think?

Mossad---I think given the current information, I think it does. Brazell---The publication of that study last year in a highly regarded medical journal (holding copy of Annals of Internal Medicine) caused zinc sales to soar. But many scientists point out the study was small and preliminary.

Dr. Dominich Jaguzio, National Institute of Health---I feel that it's inconclusive. There's not enough scientific evidence to prove that it works.

Bazell---But even with questions unanswered, the one small bit of scientific evidence had made zinc a hot product for this cold season.

Robert Bazell, NBC News, New York.