Cochrane Reviews have showed that vitamin C and Echinacea were not effective in preventing or treating colds, but zinc showed promise.

The Cochrane Canada 2011 - 2012 Annual Report, A Growing Body of Health Evidence, is now available. The report provides an overview of Cochrane Canada's undertakings and accomplishments throughout the past year to increase the use of evidence in Canada's health care system.

Alan Cassels is the author of the recently published Seeking Sickness: Medical Screening and the Misguided Hunt for Disease, and is currently writing a social history of The Cochrane Collaboration. Here he presents the essential differences – with illustrative examples – between ‘eminence-based medicine’ and ‘evidence-based medicine’.

The Health Council of Canada has developed a four-part video series, Understanding Clinical Practice Guidelines: A Video Series Primer, which provides an overview of clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) in Canada through the lens of those who design, disseminate and use them.

Better Knowledge for Better Health | Un meilleur savoir pour une meilleure santéThe 21st Cochrane Colloquium website is now live!colloquium.cochrane.org

Nutrition is currently a hot topic amongst Cochrane Review users, which is demonstrated in Cochrane’s Where’s the Evidence? A list of top 10 Cochrane Reviews (completed in partnership with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research), in which six out of the 10 reviews are related to nutrition. Despite the incidence of nutrition-related reviews found in The Cochrane Library, few dietitians participate in the Cochrane peer-review process.

The Cochrane Child Health Field’s main product, Evidence-Based Child Health: A Cochrane Review Journal, is now globally accessible after being selected for indexing in MEDLINE in October 2012. MEDLINE is the primary component of PubMed and the premiere bibliographic database of the US National Library of Medicine. The database indexes 5,500 biomedical journals and was searched 1.8 billion times in 2011.

The Canadian Cochrane Centre held a Partners Forum on 19 November 2012 in Ottawa. Eighteen of 25 partner organization representatives, from across Canada, attended the one-day event. Representatives were updated about Cochrane activities and resources. Several examples of activities and collaborative projects in knowledge translation and training were highlighted by partner representatives and the Canadian Cochrane Centre staff.