Tag Archives: Common Cold

Scientists May Have Found Cure To Common Cold

British scientists say they have found a way to “jam” the genetic code of the common cold and stop the virus from being able to replicate inside the body.

If true, it could mean almost immediate cures to the common cold.

Scientists with the Universities of Leeds and York say they used a computer model to identify the viral genome that causes rhinoviruses.  The molecules can be blocked at the genetic level and essentially stop the disease before it starts.

The breakthrough’s news was tempered by the fact the scientists would have to conduct animal testing before they can develop the drug that could deliver the necessary items to block the genetic code.

“We have understood for decades that the RNA carries the genetic messages that create viral proteins, but we didn’t know that, hidden within the stream of letters we use to denote the genetic information, is a second code governing virus assembly,” Dr Roman Tuma, Reader in Biophysics at the University of Leeds, told the London Daily Telegraph.

“It is like finding a secret message within an ordinary news report and then being able to crack the whole coding system behind it.”

Colds Last Longer Than Most Think

Many people have been complaining this extended winter about colds that will not go away or colds that seem to go away but come back stronger within a week or two.

However, doctors say that it’s not that colds are leaving and coming back.  It’s that colds can take longer to overcome and that because of so many different viruses that cause colds, it’s possible to get two different cold viruses back-to-back.

The common cold can last up to two weeks for the initial symptoms and the coughing that goes with it could last for weeks after the virus had been cleared from the body.

In the case of someone getting consecutive colds, some doctors believe that because the body’s immune system is weakened from dealing with one cold it leaves the body open to a different strain of cold virus.  There are more than 200 known viruses that can cause the common cold.

The average adult gets 2 to 5 colds per year, children can have between 7 and 10.  In the U.S. every year, about one billion Americans will get a cold.