Cure for the Common Cold May be Closer Than We Think
>> Thursday, February 12, 2009
Recently a team of researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have assembled many pieces of the genetic code for the human rhinovirus a.k.a. THE COMMON COLD!!! What they did was compile a bunch of information from various mutations of the virus and compiled a sort of family tree. Doing this tied together a bunch of information and makes the mapping of how to attack this virus even more plausible.
"There has been no success in developing effective drugs to cure the common cold, which we believe is due to incomplete information about the genetic composition of all these strains"Important findings in the study are:
- The cold is organized into about 15 small groups of differing viruses with a common ancestor
- The virus skips a step in protein synthesis making it a faster attacking virus
- Some symptoms occur when two different strains of the virus exchange genetic material
- As many as 800 mutations were found when compared to older reference strains
source article here.
9 comments:
From what I understand, this decoding has allowed for the detection of "the weakest link" in 99 strains of rhinovirus .s I believe there's over 1000 varieties identified.s So while this might not be the golden gun, it's surely a major step forward!!
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Love your site BTW! :)
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Sorry to burst the hype bubble but a cure for the common cold is already in clinical trials, and from the same people that did the research that produced Relenza and was "borrowed" to develop Tamiflu.
sRhinoviruses access nasal cells by attaching to a receptor on the cell surface.s Canyon-like clefts on the surface of the virus attach to the receptor and allow the virus to infect the cell.s Biota is developing antiviral compounds which are designed to bind to these evolutionarily conserved clefts of HRV's capsid shell and interfere with virus attachment to the targeted cell's receptor.
Biota completed Phase I (single & multi-dose) clinical trial of its HRV drug, BTA798 in 2007 and is currenty conducting Phase IIa trials.
Hope they find a cure soon!s My hubby suffers lung damage whenever he comes down with one.s For the rest of us, it just sucks to get a cold. Yuk!
Thanks Mike. And it's true. That is why I usually put in a disclaimer. It is definitely a step up!
Yes yes, I'm sure. I just post infomation about studies actually PUBLISHED. Until I see evidence of it, I won't print it. I may only be a humble blog, but I do try to do my research and site sources.
Yeah. Too many boogers can be a downer! I hope your hubby has a cold free season!
Thank you. I could not find this article at all using the database that I have access to. My school is limited in the ammount of jounals we can access. We don't pay for nearly as many as I would like. Thanks again.
s I'm no research professional either, just an individual interested primarily in bird flu, so I rarely pay for articles, relying mostly on abstracts when the full text is unavailable. Here's a search engine I use which I hope you find useful
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http://www.scirus.com/srsapp/
Thank you for this! I like browsing too, but can't usually find what I need apparently. This is a great site.
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