This is the time of year when kids are back in school around all those other kids not washing their hands often enough and boom! Everyone has a cold.
Now you’re missing work, the kids are missing school AND the cold virus is going to morph and come back around and slam you again!
Sound familiar?
Well maybe there FINALLY is some good news.
New research, published in Nature Microbiology, found that disabling a specific protein in our cells halts the progression of cold viruses.
It’s still very early days – the new method has only been tested out on mice and human cells in a dish – but the findings show promise.
It's a long read so let me try to make it simple. There are about 160 common cold viruses known as rhinoviruses (“rhino” is Greek for nose). They are part of a wider group called enteroviruses. Researchers disabled a certain protein in mammalian cells and found that this stopped enteroviruses from replicating.
Basically, the cold stopped.
If I read this right, it’s not like there would be an vaccine for the cold but more like medication that would stop it before it gets worse. It’s been tested on mice and human cells in a dish and it’s very promising.
Next stage is to get it into human clinical trials.
Can you imagine a world without Mucinex, Sudafed or Benadryl?
So keep bugging the kids, co-workers and your significant other to wash their hands…..often!