THE UNCOMMON COLD

Catching a cold is a common complaint for people all over the world. While even a nasty cold won't kill you, no one enjoys the accompanying symptoms: a sore, scratchy throat, runny nose, constant sneezing, and headaches. Colds are uncomfortable and often inconvenient, usually lasting about seven days but often lingering for up to fourteen days. On average, human adults contract between two and five colds annually, while children catch as many as six to ten.

It's no surprise that developing and selling cold medication has become big business for pharmaceutical¹ companies. Each year, consumers spend billions of dollars on medicines to alleviate this recurring problem. From over-the-counter² remedies to expensive prescription³ products, they are more than happy to hand over money for something that could help accelerate a recovery. However, most available medicines are only palliatives, meaning they may help relieve cold symptoms but do not cure the illness itself.

The fact is that, currently, there is no cure available for the common cold. Not even a suitable vaccine⁴ has been developed. In the case of influenza, commonly known as the flu, vaccines do exist, and getting one yearly is recommended. By contrast, the reason that a cold is so hard to vaccinate against or cure is that it isn't caused by any single disease. There are actually about 200 viruses responsible for our cold symptoms. In other words, a cold may not necessarily be as "common" as you imagine.

Each cold virus carries specific antigens—substances that trigger immune responses. Immune responses cause our bodies to create protective proteins called antibodies to fight off harmful diseases. So far, it has proved impossible to create one vaccine that can produce the disparate⁵ antibodies required to fight so many different antigens. Another problem is that cold viruses have the ability to change their molecular structure-in other words, to undergo mutations. That means that even if a suitable vaccine were developed, cold viruses could alter in a relatively short space of time, making the vaccine obsolete⁶. Even flu vaccines, which target a specific, known virus, must be updated frequently for this reason.

In the last three decades, medical research has concentrated on developing medicines to fight a family of viruses called the rhinoviruses, which are responsible for causing about thirty-five percent of all colds. In the late 1990s, researchers seemed to have some initial success with an antiviral molecule called BIRR4. This substance appeared to prevent rhinoviruses from binding with cells in our noses, thus blocking an infection—if taken just before getting sick. Unfortunately, people don't know when they are about to catch a cold, so they wouldn't have known when to take the BIRR4. As a result, research into the product was dropped in 2000.

Between 1997 and 2001, a company called ViroPharma tried to get approval to market an antiviral drug called pleconaril, which worked in a similar way to BIRR4. Studies indicated that pleconaril prevented rhinoviruses from attaching themselves to human cells by binding with the outer shell of the viral molecules. An application to commercialize an oral form of pleconaril was turned down by the Federal Drug Administration in the USA. The reason given was that the safety and efficacy⁷ of the drug had not been proven in a convincing manner.

There is another possible solution. In 2019, scientists found that a certain enzyme in human cells seemed to help many viruses, including cold viruses, to reproduce. This enzyme is called SETD3. To test their idea, the researchers engineered human cells to lack SETD3 and then attempted to infect those cells with various viruses. The viruses were unable to replicate themselves. This finding opens up the possibility of developing a drug that could stop cold viruses from reproducing and making us sick-though, admittedly, a great deal of work remains to be done.

For now, perhaps the safest way to fight a cold is simply to follow conventional wisdom: get plenty of bed rest, take over-the-counter remedies to combat symptoms, and drink plenty of fluids. If you do these things, your cold should be gone in seven days. Or do absolutely nothing, and it should be gone within a couple of weeks.

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Aspirin: A Darker Side

Everyone has suffered from a cold at one time or another. While we wait for a cold cure to be developed, most people simply end up taking some form of over-the-counter medication. The scary thing is that some of the medicines taken to treat cold symptoms may actually be counterproductive. For example, aspirin appears to be the perfect drug to take to fight headaches and throat inflammation, but the truth is that it can actually have adverse effects on us.

Some researchers believe that using aspirin to treat colds can increase the amount of virus you shed through nasal secretions. That means you could potentially infect a lot more people with the virus when you blow your nose near them. Another problem is that aspirin may suppress some of our immune responses and cause our noses to become even stuffier.

Several studies have also linked aspirin to the development of a condition called Reye's syndrome when used to treat children suffering from colds or flu. This condition is rare but serious, occurring in children between the ages of three and twelve. It often affects the brain or liver, causing major organ damage and, in very severe cases, death. Doctors, therefore, recommend that aspirin not be given to anyone under nineteen who is suffering from any viral illness, including the common cold.

Colds themselves may not harm us permanently, but the way we treat cold symptoms could. That means you should avoid aspirin if you are under nineteen, and if you're unsure about any other medication, you should consult a doctor.