Don’t Let a Cold Get You Down
We’re a decade into the 21st century and scientists are no closer to that most elusive goal: a cure for the common cold. If anything, cold viruses seem more formidable than ever.
Until recently, researchers thought there were about 100 variants of rhinoviruses, the most common cause of the common cold. Now, using advanced screening tests, they’ve discovered a whole new group of rhinoviruses. “It’s beginning to look as if there may be as many as 200” cold viruses, says cold expert Owen Hendley, MD, a professor of medicine at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and one of the world’s leading experts on cold viruses.
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The sheer number of different cold viruses is the reason we keep catching colds, season after season. Americans average three to four colds a year, surveys suggest. Children average six rhinovirus infections a year. (That explains why people who have kids or spend a lot of time with them are at heightened risk of catching colds.) But Hendley, who has been studying cold transmission for more than two decades, says there are simple ways to improve your odds of avoiding the season’s scourge.
How to Avoid Getting a Cold
Even if they haven’t found a cure for colds, researchers have learned plenty about how cold viruses spread. Scientists first assumed that colds were transmitted when infected people sneezed or coughed, sending tiny aerosolized droplets laden with viruses into the air, where they could be inhaled by the next cold victim. But research over the past decade suggests that we’re far more likely to pick up a cold virus, literally, by touching contaminated surfaces.
We catch a cold when we get those viruses on our fingers and then touch either our noses or eyes, the two most hospitable entry points for the virus. From there, cold viruses quickly reach nasal passages, where they take hold and begin multiplying.
Rhinoviruses can also be transmitted via handshakes and other personal contact. “But contrary to what a lot of people think, putting a contaminated fingertip into your mouth won’t result in a cold,” Hendley says. “Substances in saliva quickly destroy the virus.”
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