coughing sniffling and a sore throat
these are the iconic symptoms of an
illness we all know pretty well
the common cold yet even though this
disease affects hundreds of millions of
people each year it still doesn't have a
cure
but of course we're still looking so in
the meantime keep those cough drops
handy and of course
keep on washing your hands
nobody likes to have a cold but actually
there's many different viruses
that can cause the common cold my name
is ellen foxman
i'm a faculty member at yale university
school of medicine
and i have a research lab where we study
respiratory viruses
ellen's right there are more than 200
different viruses that have been known
to cause the common cold
but for now we'll be focusing on the
biggest group one that's responsible for
over half of all colds
called human rhinoviruses these
respiratory viruses are only 15 to 30
nanometers in diameter
making them some of the smallest viruses
out there and it's partly thanks to
their genetic makeup that they're so
good at replicating
their genome is a very relatively small
piece of rna
that only encodes about 10 different
genes
but that is a very powerful tiny little
particle
and it only needs those 10 genes because
it uses a lot of the machinery that's
already there
inside your cells to make more copies of
itself
so it's really actually incredible that
with only
this very small piece of rna the virus
is able to
do what it does and cause millions of
illnesses in our country every year
that's because human rhinoviruses like
most other respiratory viruses
travel via nasal secretions through the
air like a sneeze or a surface called a
foamite
a foamite could be something like a
keyboard or a doorknob that could help
spread the virus from one person to
another
from there all it takes is for a
contaminated hand to touch one of the
body's mucous membranes like the eyes
nose or mouth
and bam the virus has gained entry where
this virus likes to grow is in the cells
that form the lining of the airway
and it gets into those cells and
it just takes over and starts making
more copies
and then putting out those copies that's
why you feel like your throat
is so irritated and that's why you have
the
like runny nose is because your body
detects this irritation or this problem
where some of the cells are getting
killed or some of the cells are getting
taken over soon after infection
coughing sneezing headaches a mild fever
and body aches can follow
and these symptoms may easily be
confused with those of the flu but
unlike the flu where symptoms start
quite suddenly it can take a couple of
days for cold symptoms to fully develop
and they usually last anywhere from 7 to
14 days
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now as annoying as those average
symptoms may be there's not much we can
do about them
while some therapies can help treat the
symptoms there's no cure-all for the
common cold
basically you're just stuck with it for
a good week or so and for the majority
of people this may just mean a couple of
days in bed
but for others a rhinovirus infection
could be quite serious
for example for people with asthma
especially kids with asthma
a huge amount of their asthma attacks
are caused by rhinovirus
or for people with chronic lung disease
a lot of the percentage of the time that
they get in the hospital because their
disease got worse
is because of rhinovirus and for those
people
it would be very beneficial to have a
great antiviral drug
but it seems we're still a ways out from
finding one ever since human
rhinoviruses were first discovered in
the 1950s we've been trying to create
vaccines and antivirals
but we just haven't had much success
it's been a hard because
there are many many different variants
of
rhinovirus and there's always new ones
arising that means that the virus would
be pretty adept to evade a vaccine or an
antiviral drug
but while we haven't been able to crack
the cold just yet its prevalence proves
just how important preventative measures
are
so keep washing your hands avoid
touching your face and clean surfaces
around you often
since it looks like the common cold will
be with us for the long haul
try to figure out these natural defenses
and how they work and
just promote those defenses more often
do what you need to do
to um to keep those defenses on high
and then you cut that off at the very
beginning of the infection