Preventing Cold | A hotter body temperature can save you from cold, a new study suggests
Everyone has experienced a running nose and an obnoxious cough from time to time, yet a complicated cold can lead to other serious illness such as pneumonia or asthma. A common cold is treated with rest, warm meals, and with medicines such as ibuprofen, nose drops, and cough syrup. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in a year, 3,967 deaths are reported because of a common cold
Recently, a team of researchers from Yale University was dedicated to investigating how the human body acts when encountering a cold virus. Researchers looked into the Rhinovirus, the flu virus, to understand its behavior.
Rhinoviruses are the infectious agents to blame for the flu. It is the most common and predominant cause of a cold. The virus proliferates most commonly on temperatures between 33 and 35 Celsius degrees, which happens to be the temperatures of the human nose.
Akiko Iwasaki, the lead author of the investigation, examined with his colleague’s human airway cells. These are responsible for creating proteins in the immune system that protect the body from viruses. The proteins are known
as interferons.The team of researchers grabbed human airway cells and infected them with the rhinovirus in a laboratory. The cells were kept at a regular body temperature of 37 Celsius degrees, while others were kept under a body temperature of 33 Celsius degrees.
The incubated cells tried to create interferons, as they spot the cold virus near them. Both of the cells incubated at different temperatures tried and controlled the virus. Nonetheless, in cells incubated at 33 Celsius degrees the virus replicated in a fast way.
In those cells kept under normal body temperature, the cold virus died in a rapid way and didn’t have the chance to replicate or reproduce.
The team discovered that human airways weren’t able to make interferons under normal body temperatures, so the rhinovirus gained more strength and was able to reproduce the common cold.
“In this study, we found there are two additional mechanisms at play, all are more optional at 37 degrees and temperature has a profound effect on antiviral defences that affect the outcome of cold infections,” said Iwasaki in a press release.
Iwasaki’s team also discovered that on normal or warmer body temperatures the activity of a human enzyme called RNAse L, worked better on attacking and destroying viral genes.
The results of the study are coherent and complement Iwasaki’s other researchers about the common cold virus. The latest one was performed on mice and on their body temperature to fight the rhinovirus.
