Hello! I have been a doctor for 21 years. My name is Georgy Olegovich Sapego. In this article, I'll talk about recurring colds.
I was recently surprised by a story about how many people fear their snotty scarf during a cold. Like viruses will jump back into his nose. In fact, this story was popular about 70 years ago.
Then scientists assumed that if people get colds 5 times a year, then most likely there is no immunity to this infection, and we can get sick even every week.
On the other hand, by that time, observations of isolated groups of people had accumulated. For example, polar explorers at Antarctic stations. They had time to quickly get sick with a cold, and the viruses did not attack them again. In this case, it seemed that immunity was still being developed.
Other researchers took nasal swabs from sick people and poured them into healthy people. So it was possible to cause colds in 30-50% of people. It was impossible to infect all the volunteers. It was also not entirely clear with immunity.
And in the fifties of the last century, American researchers did something similar. They found many volunteer donors with snot. The donor's illness was similar to a cold, but without a high fever, so as not to run into some fatal flu.
Just in case, let me remind you that colds are considered a seasonal illness caused by viruses. It is literally called that - "common cold". It is manifested by a runny nose, cough, sore throat. The temperature may not rise. After a week, the person recovers even without treatment.
They get sick more often in the cold season, but the cold itself does not cause a cold. Adults normally get sick 3-4 times a year, and children in kindergartens can get sick every month.
In about 5% of cases, a cold ends with some kind of complication, when the paranasal sinuses or something else fester. Complications are unpredictable and cannot be prevented.
So the Americans decided to watch out for people with colds in the cold season. Every winter for several years in a row, scientists collected and froze the snot of patients with colds. Then this case was diluted, filtered through a bacterial filter and a solution with viruses was obtained.
Viruses passed through the bacterial filter, and all the rest of the muck was delayed. Scientists infected the cell culture with the resulting material, made sure that the resulting liquid did indeed contain viruses and began to inject this potion into the noses of the volunteers.
The volunteers were healthy medical students. There were almost two thousand of them, and the study lasted 5 years.
About 40% of the volunteers fell ill with a cold. Some of them received the same virus again, but then less than 10% got sick. Immunity to this virus persisted for several months. Until next year it would not have been enough, but this season, students have been protected from their virus.
In fact, scientists have typed 5 different viruses in advance. Well, or it seemed to them that it was 5. Therefore, there was an opportunity to indulge in a different infection. Students were infected not only with their own, but also with a new other virus. All this was done no earlier than 10 weeks after the first cold.
If another virus was injected again, then about the same 40% fell ill.
It turns out that long-term immunity was not developed from another infection.
Perhaps there was some other short-term protection, but this moment was not studied.
Here's a story. Would you volunteer? At that time, the hepatitis B virus had not yet been isolated, so people were bolder.
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