Echinacea and elderberry—should they be used against upper respiratory tract infections during pregnancy?

Frontiers in Pharmacology, 2014
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2014.00031/full
- The purpose of this review was to evaluate the potential use of elderberry in pregnancy. Pregnant women were intentionally left out of the clinical trials so data on safety in pregnancy is lacking.
- This review concludes that there is no supportive evidence for the use of elderberry, though all three papers that were included in their review all had positive effects against cold or flu. So, this was a strange conclusion.
· Two survey papers of herbal medicine use during pregnancy were mentioned, but these don’t address safety explicitly.