11/13/2023
[ In any case, phenylephrine is not the only cold-and-flu drug with questionable effectiveness in its approved form. The common cough drugs guaifenesin and dextromethorphan have both come under fire. But we lack the robust clinical-trial data to draw a definitive conclusion on those one way or the other. “What really helped our case is the fact that Merck funded those studies,” Hatton says. And that Merck let its scientists publish them. Failed studies from drug companies usually don’t see the light of day because they present few incentives for publication. Changing the consensus on phenylephrine took an extraordinary set of circumstances. ]
Studies prove that popular decongestants just don’t work.