As annoying as catching a cold may be, there could be a silver lining. New research suggests that it may temporarily protect you from getting covid-19.<\/p>\n
Researchers revealed that individuals, especially children, who had recently been infected by a rhinovirus<\/a>\u2014the most frequent culprit behind the common cold\u2014were remarkably less likely to get a SARS-CoV-2 infection, the virus that causes covid-19, in the following weeks. These results might shed light onto why children have lower chances of developing covid symptoms than adults.<\/p>\n An \u2018early advantage\u2019 <\/p>\n \u201cOur findings suggest that the immune boost from a recent cold may give the body an early advantage in fighting SARS-CoV-2 before it has a chance to take hold,\u201d Max Seibold, Director of the Regenerative Medicine and Genome Editing Program (REGEN) at National Jewish Health, said in a National Jewish Health statement<\/a>. \u201cThis may help explain why children, who tend to get more colds than adults, generally experience fewer and less severe COVID cases.\u201d<\/p>\n Seibold and his colleagues detailed their results in a study<\/a> published earlier this month in The Journal of Infectious Diseases, after analyzing data that tracked over 4,100 people in 1,394 households from May 2020 to February 2021. They tested thousands of self-collected nasal swabs for SARS-CoV-2 and other common respiratory viruses, such as rhinovirus.<\/p>\n Built-in boost <\/p>\n Rhinoviruses trigger interferons<\/a>\u2014natural agents that fight against infection and diseases\u2014in our airways. This reaction can give the immune system a temporary boost, leaving it better equipped to handle other viruses that show up. In fact, to further investigate how recent viral infections impact the body\u2019s antiviral defenses, the team also studied gene expression<\/a> (when genetic information is translated into a function) in people\u2019s airways and found children had a higher baseline expression of genes related to interferons than adults.<\/p>\n \u201cBased on these findings, we hypothesize that interferons induced by prior viral respiratory infections may prime the airways of children with high levels of antiviral defense proteins, resulting in reduced levels of SARS-CoV-2 infection and better clinical outcomes compared to adults,\u201d the researchers explained in the study.<\/p>\n This phenomenon, known as heterologous viral interference, \u201chas been observed for other respiratory viruses, but has yet to be demonstrated for SARS-CoV-2,\u201d the scientists added.<\/p>\n Camille Moore, lead author of the study and a biostatistician at National Jewish Health, explained that \u201cunderstanding how one virus can affect the body\u2019s response to another could help us develop new prevention strategies, especially for vulnerable populations,\u201d she said in the statement.<\/p>\n Moore also clarifies that this doesn\u2019t mean people should start trying to catch a cold. And if you think that\u2019s an obvious warning, you clearly don\u2019t know humans very well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As annoying as catching a cold may be, there could be a silver lining. New research suggests that…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":177618,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[71610,4140,210,6454,67,132,68,19804],"class_list":{"0":"post-177617","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-common-cold","9":"tag-covid-19","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-infectious-diseases","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-viruses"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115096328901271333","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}