Wednesday, February 08, 2006
6:37 PM...............................................................................
Thought this was a pretty interesting article.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/02/07/news/cold.php?rss
The uncommon cold: Sneeze and get paid for it
By Jonathan Allen The New York Times
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2006
CARDIFF, Wales It pays to catch a cold in Cardiff.
The Welsh capital is home to the Common Cold Center, which claims to be the world's only organization dedicated to researching and testing treatments for colds and flu.
Based at the University of Cardiff, the center has a ready source of test subjects for its regular clinical trials: the university's 22,000, mostly cash-shy, students, who among them catch up to 80,000 colds a year.
Major drug and health care companies - the center's regular clients include Procter & Gamble, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline - are subsidizing the studies of Cardiff's students, particularly the sickly ones.
Anna Taylor, 23, a student dentist, offered up her stuffy nose to take part in a study of a new decongestant. She was given a treatment, possibly a placebo, and then, at hourly intervals, she snorted down a tube hooked up to an airflow-measuring computer, one nostril at a time.
"I did get better," she said, though she admits her fee probably contributed to her general sense of well-being: her nose that day generated £50, or about $90.
Toan Ravenscroft, 21, who took part in the center's most recent clinical trial, calls it "easy money."
Researchers were trying to establish if exposure to the cold really does set off a cold, a nugget of apparent common sense that has been difficult to prove scientifically, according to the center.
"I was going out a lot at the time and I needed the cash and I thought, 'This is worth it even if I do get a cold,"' Ravenscroft said.
Luckily for him, he ended up in the control group and had to do nothing more hazardous than sit with his bare feet in an empty bucket while other volunteers chilled theirs in iced water for 20 minutes.
The results of the trial were published late last year in the medical journal Family Practice and they appeared to confirm what your mother already knew: Wrapping up warm may help ward off colds.
Twenty-six out of 90 chilled volunteers developed a cold within five days, compared with eight out of 90 lukewarm control subjects.
The researchers behind the trial theorized that chilling the body helped a dormant infection to take hold by causing the blood vessels in the nose to constrict, reducing the supply of white blood cells that would otherwise fight the infection.
This kind of research is a sideline to the center's main business of testing new common cold treatments and the claims with which they are to be advertised. Pharmaceutical companies must gather this kind of clinical data before their products are approved by government agencies.
With the average adult catching between two and five colds every year, it is a huge market.
In 2003, researchers at the University of Michigan calculated that Americans spent $2.9 billion on over-the-counter cold remedies and $400 million more on prescription medicines every year.
"We've had input in most products out there," said Ron Eccles, 57, who has been the center's director since it opened in 1988.
"There are so many different ways of looking at the nose," he said. "You could spend many lifetimes devoted to it." He said he believed that the nose, at least on a cellular level, was arguably "more complex than all of human civilization."
"The thing about the common cold is it's not a single disease; it's a syndrome of symptoms, caused by probably 200 different types of viruses," Eccles said. "So there's not going to be a cure, as there would be a cure for smallpox or perhaps even for AIDS.
"Mankind has got rid of all its big predators and we think we're the top of the food cycle, but in fact the viruses are still at the top and there's very little we can do about them."
A model of a cold virus stands prominently in the center's foyer. It is a neat, 20-sided shape, looking more like a geometry teacher's prop than the cause of the world's most common disease.
What the model does not depict is the globule of mucus that the virus would almost certainly be swimming in. "The viruses don't float around as little spaceships," Eccles said. "The only way you're going to catch a cold is for mucus from someone else's nose to get into your nose."
A sneeze does the job nicely, releasing a spray of virus-laden droplets that are easily inhaled by anyone nearby. Failing that, the viruses can survive for hours outside the body, lying in wait on, say, a doorknob before hitching a ride on a hand and getting rubbed into an eye.
According to Eccles, children are the most dangerous source: "They get 7 to 10 colds a year and they spread their mucus around freely."
Besides avoiding children, Eccles advises people to wash their hands regularly, eat healthily and, in light of the chilling study, wrap a scarf around the nose on cold days.
CARDIFF, Wales It pays to catch a cold in Cardiff.
The Welsh capital is home to the Common Cold Center, which claims to be the world's only organization dedicated to researching and testing treatments for colds and flu.
Based at the University of Cardiff, the center has a ready source of test subjects for its regular clinical trials: the university's 22,000, mostly cash-shy, students, who among them catch up to 80,000 colds a year.
Major drug and health care companies - the center's regular clients include Procter & Gamble, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline - are subsidizing the studies of Cardiff's students, particularly the sickly ones.
Anna Taylor, 23, a student dentist, offered up her stuffy nose to take part in a study of a new decongestant. She was given a treatment, possibly a placebo, and then, at hourly intervals, she snorted down a tube hooked up to an airflow-measuring computer, one nostril at a time.
"I did get better," she said, though she admits her fee probably contributed to her general sense of well-being: her nose that day generated £50, or about $90.
Toan Ravenscroft, 21, who took part in the center's most recent clinical trial, calls it "easy money."
Researchers were trying to establish if exposure to the cold really does set off a cold, a nugget of apparent common sense that has been difficult to prove scientifically, according to the center.
"I was going out a lot at the time and I needed the cash and I thought, 'This is worth it even if I do get a cold,"' Ravenscroft said.
Luckily for him, he ended up in the control group and had to do nothing more hazardous than sit with his bare feet in an empty bucket while other volunteers chilled theirs in iced water for 20 minutes.
The results of the trial were published late last year in the medical journal Family Practice and they appeared to confirm what your mother already knew: Wrapping up warm may help ward off colds.
Twenty-six out of 90 chilled volunteers developed a cold within five days, compared with eight out of 90 lukewarm control subjects.
The researchers behind the trial theorized that chilling the body helped a dormant infection to take hold by causing the blood vessels in the nose to constrict, reducing the supply of white blood cells that would otherwise fight the infection.
This kind of research is a sideline to the center's main business of testing new common cold treatments and the claims with which they are to be advertised. Pharmaceutical companies must gather this kind of clinical data before their products are approved by government agencies.
With the average adult catching between two and five colds every year, it is a huge market.
In 2003, researchers at the University of Michigan calculated that Americans spent $2.9 billion on over-the-counter cold remedies and $400 million more on prescription medicines every year.
"We've had input in most products out there," said Ron Eccles, 57, who has been the center's director since it opened in 1988.
"There are so many different ways of looking at the nose," he said. "You could spend many lifetimes devoted to it." He said he believed that the nose, at least on a cellular level, was arguably "more complex than all of human civilization."
"The thing about the common cold is it's not a single disease; it's a syndrome of symptoms, caused by probably 200 different types of viruses," Eccles said. "So there's not going to be a cure, as there would be a cure for smallpox or perhaps even for AIDS.
"Mankind has got rid of all its big predators and we think we're the top of the food cycle, but in fact the viruses are still at the top and there's very little we can do about them."
A model of a cold virus stands prominently in the center's foyer. It is a neat, 20-sided shape, looking more like a geometry teacher's prop than the cause of the world's most common disease.
What the model does not depict is the globule of mucus that the virus would almost certainly be swimming in. "The viruses don't float around as little spaceships," Eccles said. "The only way you're going to catch a cold is for mucus from someone else's nose to get into your nose."
A sneeze does the job nicely, releasing a spray of virus-laden droplets that are easily inhaled by anyone nearby. Failing that, the viruses can survive for hours outside the body, lying in wait on, say, a doorknob before hitching a ride on a hand and getting rubbed into an eye.
According to Eccles, children are the most dangerous source: "They get 7 to 10 colds a year and they spread their mucus around freely."
Besides avoiding children, Eccles advises people to wash their hands regularly, eat healthily and, in light of the chilling study, wrap a scarf around the nose on cold days.
CARDIFF, Wales It pays to catch a cold in Cardiff.
The Welsh capital is home to the Common Cold Center, which claims to be the world's only organization dedicated to researching and testing treatments for colds and flu.
Based at the University of Cardiff, the center has a ready source of test subjects for its regular clinical trials: the university's 22,000, mostly cash-shy, students, who among them catch up to 80,000 colds a year.
Major drug and health care companies - the center's regular clients include Procter & Gamble, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline - are subsidizing the studies of Cardiff's students, particularly the sickly ones.
Anna Taylor, 23, a student dentist, offered up her stuffy nose to take part in a study of a new decongestant. She was given a treatment, possibly a placebo, and then, at hourly intervals, she snorted down a tube hooked up to an airflow-measuring computer, one nostril at a time.
"I did get better," she said, though she admits her fee probably contributed to her general sense of well-being: her nose that day generated £50, or about $90.
Toan Ravenscroft, 21, who took part in the center's most recent clinical trial, calls it "easy money."
Researchers were trying to establish if exposure to the cold really does set off a cold, a nugget of apparent common sense that has been difficult to prove scientifically, according to the center.
"I was going out a lot at the time and I needed the cash and I thought, 'This is worth it even if I do get a cold,"' Ravenscroft said.
Luckily for him, he ended up in the control group and had to do nothing more hazardous than sit with his bare feet in an empty bucket while other volunteers chilled theirs in iced water for 20 minutes.
The results of the trial were published late last year in the medical journal Family Practice and they appeared to confirm what your mother already knew: Wrapping up warm may help ward off colds.
Twenty-six out of 90 chilled volunteers developed a cold within five days, compared with eight out of 90 lukewarm control subjects.
The researchers behind the trial theorized that chilling the body helped a dormant infection to take hold by causing the blood vessels in the nose to constrict, reducing the supply of white blood cells that would otherwise fight the infection.
This kind of research is a sideline to the center's main business of testing new common cold treatments and the claims with which they are to be advertised. Pharmaceutical companies must gather this kind of clinical data before their products are approved by government agencies.
With the average adult catching between two and five colds every year, it is a huge market.
In 2003, researchers at the University of Michigan calculated that Americans spent $2.9 billion on over-the-counter cold remedies and $400 million more on prescription medicines every year.
"We've had input in most products out there," said Ron Eccles, 57, who has been the center's director since it opened in 1988.
"There are so many different ways of looking at the nose," he said. "You could spend many lifetimes devoted to it." He said he believed that the nose, at least on a cellular level, was arguably "more complex than all of human civilization."
"The thing about the common cold is it's not a single disease; it's a syndrome of symptoms, caused by probably 200 different types of viruses," Eccles said. "So there's not going to be a cure, as there would be a cure for smallpox or perhaps even for AIDS.
"Mankind has got rid of all its big predators and we think we're the top of the food cycle, but in fact the viruses are still at the top and there's very little we can do about them."
A model of a cold virus stands prominently in the center's foyer. It is a neat, 20-sided shape, looking more like a geometry teacher's prop than the cause of the world's most common disease.
What the model does not depict is the globule of mucus that the virus would almost certainly be swimming in. "The viruses don't float around as little spaceships," Eccles said. "The only way you're going to catch a cold is for mucus from someone else's nose to get into your nose."
A sneeze does the job nicely, releasing a spray of virus-laden droplets that are easily inhaled by anyone nearby. Failing that, the viruses can survive for hours outside the body, lying in wait on, say, a doorknob before hitching a ride on a hand and getting rubbed into an eye.
According to Eccles, children are the most dangerous source: "They get 7 to 10 colds a year and they spread their mucus around freely."
Besides avoiding children, Eccles advises people to wash their hands regularly, eat healthily and, in light of the chilling study, wrap a scarf around the nose on cold days.
CARDIFF, Wales It pays to catch a cold in Cardiff.
The Welsh capital is home to the Common Cold Center, which claims to be the world's only organization dedicated to researching and testing treatments for colds and flu.
Based at the University of Cardiff, the center has a ready source of test subjects for its regular clinical trials: the university's 22,000, mostly cash-shy, students, who among them catch up to 80,000 colds a year.
Major drug and health care companies - the center's regular clients include Procter & Gamble, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline - are subsidizing the studies of Cardiff's students, particularly the sickly ones.
Anna Taylor, 23, a student dentist, offered up her stuffy nose to take part in a study of a new decongestant. She was given a treatment, possibly a placebo, and then, at hourly intervals, she snorted down a tube hooked up to an airflow-measuring computer, one nostril at a time.
"I did get better," she said, though she admits her fee probably contributed to her general sense of well-being: her nose that day generated £50, or about $90.
Toan Ravenscroft, 21, who took part in the center's most recent clinical trial, calls it "easy money."
Researchers were trying to establish if exposure to the cold really does set off a cold, a nugget of apparent common sense that has been difficult to prove scientifically, according to the center.
"I was going out a lot at the time and I needed the cash and I thought, 'This is worth it even if I do get a cold,"' Ravenscroft said.
Luckily for him, he ended up in the control group and had to do nothing more hazardous than sit with his bare feet in an empty bucket while other volunteers chilled theirs in iced water for 20 minutes.
The results of the trial were published late last year in the medical journal Family Practice and they appeared to confirm what your mother already knew: Wrapping up warm may help ward off colds.
Twenty-six out of 90 chilled volunteers developed a cold within five days, compared with eight out of 90 lukewarm control subjects.
The researchers behind the trial theorized that chilling the body helped a dormant infection to take hold by causing the blood vessels in the nose to constrict, reducing the supply of white blood cells that would otherwise fight the infection.
This kind of research is a sideline to the center's main business of testing new common cold treatments and the claims with which they are to be advertised. Pharmaceutical companies must gather this kind of clinical data before their products are approved by government agencies.
With the average adult catching between two and five colds every year, it is a huge market.
In 2003, researchers at the University of Michigan calculated that Americans spent $2.9 billion on over-the-counter cold remedies and $400 million more on prescription medicines every year.
"We've had input in most products out there," said Ron Eccles, 57, who has been the center's director since it opened in 1988.
"There are so many different ways of looking at the nose," he said. "You could spend many lifetimes devoted to it." He said he believed that the nose, at least on a cellular level, was arguably "more complex than all of human civilization."
"The thing about the common cold is it's not a single disease; it's a syndrome of symptoms, caused by probably 200 different types of viruses," Eccles said. "So there's not going to be a cure, as there would be a cure for smallpox or perhaps even for AIDS.
"Mankind has got rid of all its big predators and we think we're the top of the food cycle, but in fact the viruses are still at the top and there's very little we can do about them."
A model of a cold virus stands prominently in the center's foyer. It is a neat, 20-sided shape, looking more like a geometry teacher's prop than the cause of the world's most common disease.
What the model does not depict is the globule of mucus that the virus would almost certainly be swimming in. "The viruses don't float around as little spaceships," Eccles said. "The only way you're going to catch a cold is for mucus from someone else's nose to get into your nose."
A sneeze does the job nicely, releasing a spray of virus-laden droplets that are easily inhaled by anyone nearby. Failing that, the viruses can survive for hours outside the body, lying in wait on, say, a doorknob before hitching a ride on a hand and getting rubbed into an eye.
According to Eccles, children are the most dangerous source: "They get 7 to 10 colds a year and they spread their mucus around freely."
Besides avoiding children, Eccles advises people to wash their hands regularly, eat healthily and, in light of the chilling study, wrap a scarf around the nose on cold days.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/02/07/news/cold.php?rss
The uncommon cold: Sneeze and get paid for it
By Jonathan Allen The New York Times
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2006
CARDIFF, Wales It pays to catch a cold in Cardiff.
The Welsh capital is home to the Common Cold Center, which claims to be the world's only organization dedicated to researching and testing treatments for colds and flu.
Based at the University of Cardiff, the center has a ready source of test subjects for its regular clinical trials: the university's 22,000, mostly cash-shy, students, who among them catch up to 80,000 colds a year.
Major drug and health care companies - the center's regular clients include Procter & Gamble, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline - are subsidizing the studies of Cardiff's students, particularly the sickly ones.
Anna Taylor, 23, a student dentist, offered up her stuffy nose to take part in a study of a new decongestant. She was given a treatment, possibly a placebo, and then, at hourly intervals, she snorted down a tube hooked up to an airflow-measuring computer, one nostril at a time.
"I did get better," she said, though she admits her fee probably contributed to her general sense of well-being: her nose that day generated £50, or about $90.
Toan Ravenscroft, 21, who took part in the center's most recent clinical trial, calls it "easy money."
Researchers were trying to establish if exposure to the cold really does set off a cold, a nugget of apparent common sense that has been difficult to prove scientifically, according to the center.
"I was going out a lot at the time and I needed the cash and I thought, 'This is worth it even if I do get a cold,"' Ravenscroft said.
Luckily for him, he ended up in the control group and had to do nothing more hazardous than sit with his bare feet in an empty bucket while other volunteers chilled theirs in iced water for 20 minutes.
The results of the trial were published late last year in the medical journal Family Practice and they appeared to confirm what your mother already knew: Wrapping up warm may help ward off colds.
Twenty-six out of 90 chilled volunteers developed a cold within five days, compared with eight out of 90 lukewarm control subjects.
The researchers behind the trial theorized that chilling the body helped a dormant infection to take hold by causing the blood vessels in the nose to constrict, reducing the supply of white blood cells that would otherwise fight the infection.
This kind of research is a sideline to the center's main business of testing new common cold treatments and the claims with which they are to be advertised. Pharmaceutical companies must gather this kind of clinical data before their products are approved by government agencies.
With the average adult catching between two and five colds every year, it is a huge market.
In 2003, researchers at the University of Michigan calculated that Americans spent $2.9 billion on over-the-counter cold remedies and $400 million more on prescription medicines every year.
"We've had input in most products out there," said Ron Eccles, 57, who has been the center's director since it opened in 1988.
"There are so many different ways of looking at the nose," he said. "You could spend many lifetimes devoted to it." He said he believed that the nose, at least on a cellular level, was arguably "more complex than all of human civilization."
"The thing about the common cold is it's not a single disease; it's a syndrome of symptoms, caused by probably 200 different types of viruses," Eccles said. "So there's not going to be a cure, as there would be a cure for smallpox or perhaps even for AIDS.
"Mankind has got rid of all its big predators and we think we're the top of the food cycle, but in fact the viruses are still at the top and there's very little we can do about them."
A model of a cold virus stands prominently in the center's foyer. It is a neat, 20-sided shape, looking more like a geometry teacher's prop than the cause of the world's most common disease.
What the model does not depict is the globule of mucus that the virus would almost certainly be swimming in. "The viruses don't float around as little spaceships," Eccles said. "The only way you're going to catch a cold is for mucus from someone else's nose to get into your nose."
A sneeze does the job nicely, releasing a spray of virus-laden droplets that are easily inhaled by anyone nearby. Failing that, the viruses can survive for hours outside the body, lying in wait on, say, a doorknob before hitching a ride on a hand and getting rubbed into an eye.
According to Eccles, children are the most dangerous source: "They get 7 to 10 colds a year and they spread their mucus around freely."
Besides avoiding children, Eccles advises people to wash their hands regularly, eat healthily and, in light of the chilling study, wrap a scarf around the nose on cold days.
CARDIFF, Wales It pays to catch a cold in Cardiff.
The Welsh capital is home to the Common Cold Center, which claims to be the world's only organization dedicated to researching and testing treatments for colds and flu.
Based at the University of Cardiff, the center has a ready source of test subjects for its regular clinical trials: the university's 22,000, mostly cash-shy, students, who among them catch up to 80,000 colds a year.
Major drug and health care companies - the center's regular clients include Procter & Gamble, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline - are subsidizing the studies of Cardiff's students, particularly the sickly ones.
Anna Taylor, 23, a student dentist, offered up her stuffy nose to take part in a study of a new decongestant. She was given a treatment, possibly a placebo, and then, at hourly intervals, she snorted down a tube hooked up to an airflow-measuring computer, one nostril at a time.
"I did get better," she said, though she admits her fee probably contributed to her general sense of well-being: her nose that day generated £50, or about $90.
Toan Ravenscroft, 21, who took part in the center's most recent clinical trial, calls it "easy money."
Researchers were trying to establish if exposure to the cold really does set off a cold, a nugget of apparent common sense that has been difficult to prove scientifically, according to the center.
"I was going out a lot at the time and I needed the cash and I thought, 'This is worth it even if I do get a cold,"' Ravenscroft said.
Luckily for him, he ended up in the control group and had to do nothing more hazardous than sit with his bare feet in an empty bucket while other volunteers chilled theirs in iced water for 20 minutes.
The results of the trial were published late last year in the medical journal Family Practice and they appeared to confirm what your mother already knew: Wrapping up warm may help ward off colds.
Twenty-six out of 90 chilled volunteers developed a cold within five days, compared with eight out of 90 lukewarm control subjects.
The researchers behind the trial theorized that chilling the body helped a dormant infection to take hold by causing the blood vessels in the nose to constrict, reducing the supply of white blood cells that would otherwise fight the infection.
This kind of research is a sideline to the center's main business of testing new common cold treatments and the claims with which they are to be advertised. Pharmaceutical companies must gather this kind of clinical data before their products are approved by government agencies.
With the average adult catching between two and five colds every year, it is a huge market.
In 2003, researchers at the University of Michigan calculated that Americans spent $2.9 billion on over-the-counter cold remedies and $400 million more on prescription medicines every year.
"We've had input in most products out there," said Ron Eccles, 57, who has been the center's director since it opened in 1988.
"There are so many different ways of looking at the nose," he said. "You could spend many lifetimes devoted to it." He said he believed that the nose, at least on a cellular level, was arguably "more complex than all of human civilization."
"The thing about the common cold is it's not a single disease; it's a syndrome of symptoms, caused by probably 200 different types of viruses," Eccles said. "So there's not going to be a cure, as there would be a cure for smallpox or perhaps even for AIDS.
"Mankind has got rid of all its big predators and we think we're the top of the food cycle, but in fact the viruses are still at the top and there's very little we can do about them."
A model of a cold virus stands prominently in the center's foyer. It is a neat, 20-sided shape, looking more like a geometry teacher's prop than the cause of the world's most common disease.
What the model does not depict is the globule of mucus that the virus would almost certainly be swimming in. "The viruses don't float around as little spaceships," Eccles said. "The only way you're going to catch a cold is for mucus from someone else's nose to get into your nose."
A sneeze does the job nicely, releasing a spray of virus-laden droplets that are easily inhaled by anyone nearby. Failing that, the viruses can survive for hours outside the body, lying in wait on, say, a doorknob before hitching a ride on a hand and getting rubbed into an eye.
According to Eccles, children are the most dangerous source: "They get 7 to 10 colds a year and they spread their mucus around freely."
Besides avoiding children, Eccles advises people to wash their hands regularly, eat healthily and, in light of the chilling study, wrap a scarf around the nose on cold days.
CARDIFF, Wales It pays to catch a cold in Cardiff.
The Welsh capital is home to the Common Cold Center, which claims to be the world's only organization dedicated to researching and testing treatments for colds and flu.
Based at the University of Cardiff, the center has a ready source of test subjects for its regular clinical trials: the university's 22,000, mostly cash-shy, students, who among them catch up to 80,000 colds a year.
Major drug and health care companies - the center's regular clients include Procter & Gamble, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline - are subsidizing the studies of Cardiff's students, particularly the sickly ones.
Anna Taylor, 23, a student dentist, offered up her stuffy nose to take part in a study of a new decongestant. She was given a treatment, possibly a placebo, and then, at hourly intervals, she snorted down a tube hooked up to an airflow-measuring computer, one nostril at a time.
"I did get better," she said, though she admits her fee probably contributed to her general sense of well-being: her nose that day generated £50, or about $90.
Toan Ravenscroft, 21, who took part in the center's most recent clinical trial, calls it "easy money."
Researchers were trying to establish if exposure to the cold really does set off a cold, a nugget of apparent common sense that has been difficult to prove scientifically, according to the center.
"I was going out a lot at the time and I needed the cash and I thought, 'This is worth it even if I do get a cold,"' Ravenscroft said.
Luckily for him, he ended up in the control group and had to do nothing more hazardous than sit with his bare feet in an empty bucket while other volunteers chilled theirs in iced water for 20 minutes.
The results of the trial were published late last year in the medical journal Family Practice and they appeared to confirm what your mother already knew: Wrapping up warm may help ward off colds.
Twenty-six out of 90 chilled volunteers developed a cold within five days, compared with eight out of 90 lukewarm control subjects.
The researchers behind the trial theorized that chilling the body helped a dormant infection to take hold by causing the blood vessels in the nose to constrict, reducing the supply of white blood cells that would otherwise fight the infection.
This kind of research is a sideline to the center's main business of testing new common cold treatments and the claims with which they are to be advertised. Pharmaceutical companies must gather this kind of clinical data before their products are approved by government agencies.
With the average adult catching between two and five colds every year, it is a huge market.
In 2003, researchers at the University of Michigan calculated that Americans spent $2.9 billion on over-the-counter cold remedies and $400 million more on prescription medicines every year.
"We've had input in most products out there," said Ron Eccles, 57, who has been the center's director since it opened in 1988.
"There are so many different ways of looking at the nose," he said. "You could spend many lifetimes devoted to it." He said he believed that the nose, at least on a cellular level, was arguably "more complex than all of human civilization."
"The thing about the common cold is it's not a single disease; it's a syndrome of symptoms, caused by probably 200 different types of viruses," Eccles said. "So there's not going to be a cure, as there would be a cure for smallpox or perhaps even for AIDS.
"Mankind has got rid of all its big predators and we think we're the top of the food cycle, but in fact the viruses are still at the top and there's very little we can do about them."
A model of a cold virus stands prominently in the center's foyer. It is a neat, 20-sided shape, looking more like a geometry teacher's prop than the cause of the world's most common disease.
What the model does not depict is the globule of mucus that the virus would almost certainly be swimming in. "The viruses don't float around as little spaceships," Eccles said. "The only way you're going to catch a cold is for mucus from someone else's nose to get into your nose."
A sneeze does the job nicely, releasing a spray of virus-laden droplets that are easily inhaled by anyone nearby. Failing that, the viruses can survive for hours outside the body, lying in wait on, say, a doorknob before hitching a ride on a hand and getting rubbed into an eye.
According to Eccles, children are the most dangerous source: "They get 7 to 10 colds a year and they spread their mucus around freely."
Besides avoiding children, Eccles advises people to wash their hands regularly, eat healthily and, in light of the chilling study, wrap a scarf around the nose on cold days.
CARDIFF, Wales It pays to catch a cold in Cardiff.
The Welsh capital is home to the Common Cold Center, which claims to be the world's only organization dedicated to researching and testing treatments for colds and flu.
Based at the University of Cardiff, the center has a ready source of test subjects for its regular clinical trials: the university's 22,000, mostly cash-shy, students, who among them catch up to 80,000 colds a year.
Major drug and health care companies - the center's regular clients include Procter & Gamble, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline - are subsidizing the studies of Cardiff's students, particularly the sickly ones.
Anna Taylor, 23, a student dentist, offered up her stuffy nose to take part in a study of a new decongestant. She was given a treatment, possibly a placebo, and then, at hourly intervals, she snorted down a tube hooked up to an airflow-measuring computer, one nostril at a time.
"I did get better," she said, though she admits her fee probably contributed to her general sense of well-being: her nose that day generated £50, or about $90.
Toan Ravenscroft, 21, who took part in the center's most recent clinical trial, calls it "easy money."
Researchers were trying to establish if exposure to the cold really does set off a cold, a nugget of apparent common sense that has been difficult to prove scientifically, according to the center.
"I was going out a lot at the time and I needed the cash and I thought, 'This is worth it even if I do get a cold,"' Ravenscroft said.
Luckily for him, he ended up in the control group and had to do nothing more hazardous than sit with his bare feet in an empty bucket while other volunteers chilled theirs in iced water for 20 minutes.
The results of the trial were published late last year in the medical journal Family Practice and they appeared to confirm what your mother already knew: Wrapping up warm may help ward off colds.
Twenty-six out of 90 chilled volunteers developed a cold within five days, compared with eight out of 90 lukewarm control subjects.
The researchers behind the trial theorized that chilling the body helped a dormant infection to take hold by causing the blood vessels in the nose to constrict, reducing the supply of white blood cells that would otherwise fight the infection.
This kind of research is a sideline to the center's main business of testing new common cold treatments and the claims with which they are to be advertised. Pharmaceutical companies must gather this kind of clinical data before their products are approved by government agencies.
With the average adult catching between two and five colds every year, it is a huge market.
In 2003, researchers at the University of Michigan calculated that Americans spent $2.9 billion on over-the-counter cold remedies and $400 million more on prescription medicines every year.
"We've had input in most products out there," said Ron Eccles, 57, who has been the center's director since it opened in 1988.
"There are so many different ways of looking at the nose," he said. "You could spend many lifetimes devoted to it." He said he believed that the nose, at least on a cellular level, was arguably "more complex than all of human civilization."
"The thing about the common cold is it's not a single disease; it's a syndrome of symptoms, caused by probably 200 different types of viruses," Eccles said. "So there's not going to be a cure, as there would be a cure for smallpox or perhaps even for AIDS.
"Mankind has got rid of all its big predators and we think we're the top of the food cycle, but in fact the viruses are still at the top and there's very little we can do about them."
A model of a cold virus stands prominently in the center's foyer. It is a neat, 20-sided shape, looking more like a geometry teacher's prop than the cause of the world's most common disease.
What the model does not depict is the globule of mucus that the virus would almost certainly be swimming in. "The viruses don't float around as little spaceships," Eccles said. "The only way you're going to catch a cold is for mucus from someone else's nose to get into your nose."
A sneeze does the job nicely, releasing a spray of virus-laden droplets that are easily inhaled by anyone nearby. Failing that, the viruses can survive for hours outside the body, lying in wait on, say, a doorknob before hitching a ride on a hand and getting rubbed into an eye.
According to Eccles, children are the most dangerous source: "They get 7 to 10 colds a year and they spread their mucus around freely."
Besides avoiding children, Eccles advises people to wash their hands regularly, eat healthily and, in light of the chilling study, wrap a scarf around the nose on cold days.
