Berry-Vegetable Nectar May Help to Diminish Hospital Visits and Service Reliefs in Conscripts during the High Risk Period of Upper Respiratory Tract Infections

Abstract

Phytophenols can counteract Upper Respiratory Tract Infections (URTI) by effect-ing on the microbes or by promoting immunity. At population level URTI has high economic significance. The aim of the study was to clarify if hospital visits or hospitalization or service reliefs from military service in conscripts could be diminished by phytophenol rich berry-veg-etable nectar supplementation during high URTI-risk period. The 6.5 week intervention was carried out during highest URTI-risk at winter. The intervention subjects were predominantly healthy male conscripts (n=188) in a four military companies. Controls were either from same four companies (n=359) or from eleven other companies (n=1597). All conscripts lived in a same garrison within similar environment and had similar exercise program and had similar diet ad libitum. Intervention subjects received three portions of berry-vegetable nectar in a day. Weekly visits at the hospital, service reliefs and days in the hospital per company were recorded. Effect by intervention was analyzed between intervention and control companies by repeated measures analysis of variance. Intervention effect by berry-vegetable nectar was seen as a lower amount of visits at the hospital clinic (p=0.002), and as a lower amount of reliefs from outdoor service (p=0.049), while significant effect on hospitalization or on releases from indoor and outdoor reliefs was not observed. We conclude that nutritional supplementation by-phytophenol rich berry-vegetable nectar may diminish hospital visits and reliefs from outdoor service in conscripts during high URTI-risk period.