This might be about the difference between elderberry and “elderberry extract”? [1] confirms that Sambucol contains 3.8g elderberry per 10ml, as you say. I wish it were more descriptive. [2] says Elderberrys are 80% water, bringing us down to 4.5g of whatever’s left over. I could believe that “elderberry extract” is only about 20% again of that? Though my first guess would have been that the extract is just “elderberries with the water taken out”.
Looking up the references for human trials, Chris offers [3] and [4]. [3] doesn’t seem to be open access and there’s nothing helpful in the abstract. Glancing at [4], it’s not about Sambucol but they did seem to use ~1g of elderberry extract. I also ran into [5] which Chris doesn’t cite but seems relevant since it’s actually about Sambucol, but the dose isn’t in the abstract. (It says free full text but I couldn’t find it with a few seconds of clicking, I think maybe I’d need to create an account.)
So my tentative guess would be that Sambucol just has a lot less “elderberry extract” than the 38% concentration makes it sound like; so that if you’re taking that you’d want to take the recommended dose, to get the equivalent of ~1000mg “elderberry extract” from other sources.
Good question, and thanks for looking into it!
This might be about the difference between elderberry and “elderberry extract”? [1] confirms that Sambucol contains 3.8g elderberry per 10ml, as you say. I wish it were more descriptive. [2] says Elderberrys are 80% water, bringing us down to 4.5g of whatever’s left over. I could believe that “elderberry extract” is only about 20% again of that? Though my first guess would have been that the extract is just “elderberries with the water taken out”.
Looking up the references for human trials, Chris offers [3] and [4]. [3] doesn’t seem to be open access and there’s nothing helpful in the abstract. Glancing at [4], it’s not about Sambucol but they did seem to use ~1g of elderberry extract. I also ran into [5] which Chris doesn’t cite but seems relevant since it’s actually about Sambucol, but the dose isn’t in the abstract. (It says free full text but I couldn’t find it with a few seconds of clicking, I think maybe I’d need to create an account.)
So my tentative guess would be that Sambucol just has a lot less “elderberry extract” than the 38% concentration makes it sound like; so that if you’re taking that you’d want to take the recommended dose, to get the equivalent of ~1000mg “elderberry extract” from other sources.
[1] https://sambucol.co.uk/product/sambucol-original/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambucus
[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24409980
[4] https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/8/4/182/htm
[5] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11399518