| Treeo Feature |

Don’t Catch That Cold!

By Shoshana Gross | November 28, 2023

Scientists are still working on exactly how we catch those colds. It’s a lot more complicated than you might expect!

“And don’t forget the boxes of tissues!” Mrs. Goldberg calls.

It’s the first day of school, and children all over the United States are streaming into their classrooms lugging backpacks full of notebooks, pencils — and boxes of tissues. Yet no matter how many boxes come in, by the middle of the winter, there’s not a tissue in sight. All that’s left are runny noses and uncontrollable sneezes.

That’s not surprising when you realize children suffer between six and ten colds per year, from September to May. If each cold lasts a week to ten days, that’s approximately 60 congested days every year! With an estimated one billion colds in the United States each winter, doctors should know everything about this common illness. There should be a vaccine changing winters from runny rounds of colds to a season of snowballs and sledding, right?

Wrong. While the cold is common, the solution is definitely not as close as the next tissue. Scientists are still working on exactly how we catch those colds. It’s a lot more complicated than you might expect!

Nose-It-All

During World War I (1914–1918), researchers believed that nasal secretions (mucus) from a sick person, placed on a healthy person’s nose or eyes, would automatically cause a cold. A handful of volunteers ran an experiment to test this out.

While many of the healthy people did get sick, around ten percent of the volunteers didn’t. Even stranger, one out of four tested sick, but had no symptoms — something called a “silent cold.” Were they missing something?

The invention of high-speed flash photographs in the 1940s led to the next theory. Viewing a high-speed photograph of a sneeze was like watching water shooting from a hose — thousands of droplets sprayed out of the subject’s mouth and nose at speeds close to 100 miles per hour! British scientists discovered that if a plate was placed three feet away from someone sneezing, 19,000 colonies (groups) of bacteria could reach it. Tiny particles from a sneeze could remain in the air long after the sneezer left the room.

Now scientists were sure: Colds spread through germ-filled drops in the air. But could they prove it?

Close-up Contamination

The year was 1950, and the man was Sir Christopher Andrews of the Common Cold Research Unit in Salisbury, England. To prove the colds-spread-through-the-air theory, 12 volunteers were quarantined on an empty island off Scotland for ten weeks, after which six sick people were brought in. First, the sick folks had to sit in an empty room for three hours, sneezing and blowing their noses. After they left, four of the healthy volunteers sat in this germy room for a few hours.

Next, the runny-nosed invaders were brought to a second room, where the next four healthy people were waiting, and all sat all together for a few hours. Sir Christopher and his team made sure the germ droplets had travelled all around the room before they let everyone out.

Finally, the sick people were brought to a separate house where they lived and ate together with the last four healthy people for three days. The healthy people were closely observed for the colds they were certainly going to get –— except that, to Sir Christopher’s astonishment, not one of them got sick!

Hands-On

So what was responsible for passing on the common cold? A team at the University of Virginia conducted a set of studies in 1973 to test a new idea. They found that many sufferers carried the cold virus on their hands. The germs could survive for at least three hours on wood, metal, clothing, and other surfaces.

When volunteers touched contaminated surfaces and then rubbed their eyes and noses, approximately 50 percent of them caught a cold. So, all you have to do is wash your hands often and make sure not to touch your face — and you’re guaranteed a cold-free winter, right?

Cold researchers at the University of Wisconsin decided to have healthy and sick volunteers play cards together for an entire day. The healthy people wore devices to stop them from touching their faces — wide plastic collars or arm braces (assistants helped out when they needed to scratch their noses!). These were removed only for meals, and then their hands were disinfected and gloved.

The result? More than half of the healthy people caught colds! How? The crafty cold virus seems to slip past our guard — sometimes through the quickest touch, the smallest breath, or the fastest sneeze. We’re still not absolutely sure, but apparently colds spread in many different ways. We do know that as the days get chillier, colds become more common. So it’s a good idea to stock up on tissues!

Rhino — what?

More than 200 different viruses cause colds, with around 40 percent caused by 100 types of rhinoviruses (the virus which causes the common cold). Unfortunately, it’s impossible to be immune to every type of cold or create a medication to fight each of them. And if you’re thinking, what about antibiotics? think again. Regular antibiotics only work against bacterial infections, and the common cold is caused by a virus. But maybe sometime in the distant future, your grandchildren will simply take a medication and stay cold-free — you can always hope!

Why a Cold?

People used to believe that cold weather caused colds. Colds are more common during colder months because children are in school, and we spend more time indoors around sick people and their germs.