Talk:Common cold

Cold Season in Brazil

I am Brazilian myself and never heard of anything like widespread cold during hot seasons, quite the opposite, as it would be expected. Could anybody find any reference for that claim? (it's in the end of the article) Otherwise, I think it would be appropriate to delete that paragraph.

Unreferenced text removed -- I could find no source on the web for this claim. I am wiling to replace if anyone finds a reliable sourceG716 22:15, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Latin meaning of Nasopharyngitis

Naso means nose or nasal, Pharybg is the part of the neck or throat, the alimentary canal between the palate and the esophagus, itis inflammation of

So in my understanding, Nasopharyngitis translated in Modern simply english is Inflammation of the nose in the alimentary canel of the neck or throat Elantrix 30/6/07

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Does cold weather bring on more infection?

I don't know, but walking barefoot on a cold floor instantly causes my throat to congest and nose to run. The Cure? Wear warm socks and shoes! Why does this occur? Who knows, but it is called idiopathic rhinitis. My zinc lozenges help too. (reference [1]) georgeeby 2/3/06

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It would seem to me that the best possible link would be the low humidity of cold air. This clearly leads to a drying of the nose, lips, etc., and this drying leads to cracking (even microscopically) which allows viruses to enter the body. The NIH says there's no link, however.... Sublium 16:02, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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Regarding the "cold doesn't cause cold" issue, Dr. Greene gives an interesting argument which could give some justification why cold air could still influence the catching of a cold, despite no clinical evidence *yet*. I suggest that those who are knowledgeable about this have a look at this and maybe make a few additions to the article. I am definitively not knowledgeable enough of the subject yet to have a solid opinion. -- Simon Lacoste-Julien 16:30 (PST), March 7, 2004

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The coldness of winter also reduces the immune system which would give an increase in infection Jonathanriddell 21:03, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

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I have heard that you can get a cold more easily when it's cold because the blood ciculation in the areas near the skin is reduced so that viruses can evolve more easily. I don't really know anything, but I think it hard to believe that there is no connection whatsoever. Is it really an established opinion that temperature has no effect? If not, the article is very misleading - many people may be sitting out there in the cold now feeling safe but catching a cold anyway ;-) --Abaris 23 Aug 2004

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Cold weather tends to keep people in close quarters, leading to increased physical contact, so this could be a contributing factor. A-giau 05:52, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

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I'm not an MD, but Dr Greene's webpage renders me skeptical. Despite the .org extension, his web site looks pretty much like a commercial site. I'd always be careful with facts from this type of websites, although he does not seem to sell alternative medicines to treat common colds. He is a pediatrician, not a specialist on respiratory infections.

Apart from my prejudices above, he starts his argument by a short review of scientific research that showed no relationship between temperature and cold infections, which does not hinder him from setting up an unproven theory about how temperature might affect the chance of getting infected. IIRC, the volunteers in earlier studies were deliberately sprayed with cold viruses and temperature did not affect infection rates. His theory might seem plausible, but is not backed up by empirical data. -- Han-Kwang (talk) 12:47, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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If cold does not cause cold, how can you explain observable coincidence between staying in cold with getting ill? This coincidence seems too strong for nocebo. --Grzes 00:33, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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I'm not an MD, but I tend to have more belief in controlled experiments than personal experience. As an analogy: I have observed that almost always if I choose between two queues in the supermarket, I pick the one that is slowest. Everyone else that I know has the same experience. This correlation is too strong to be a coincidence.

This is orthogonal to the common cold issue, but I recall listening to a talk in a mathematics conference 6 years ago which gave some explanation using queuing theory for this phenomenon. I unfortunately don't remember the argument (and had no idea what were Markov chains and stochastic processes at the time). Now that I know more about those, I can't reproduce a model which would make you more likely to choose the bad queue if you only have 2 queues (because of the symmetry of the model). But I would first of all suspect a psychological component of noticing the bad events first (so that you would tend to notice less when you picked the right lane). And also, note that you often have more than 2 lanes. And so if you just consider the 3 lanes case (say one to your left and one to your right), and they are all equally likely of finishing first, then the probability that one of your neighbors being faster than you is 2/3. Simon Lacoste-Julien 22:05, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There is a seasonal variation in common cold infections, which is attributed to people staying indoors more often, with less ventilation to get rid of airborne infectuous droplets. If the chance of a cold-bearing person transmitting his/her infection is 0.9 during summertime, and 1.1 during wintertime, that will make the difference between very few infections and an explosive epidemy.

I know about the indoor argument, but my personal experience is that I catch colds when I have been in cold temperature not properly dressed, for some reasons. I can spend a lot of time indoor during the cold season and not get sick, and then if I spend some time outside during windy conditions without a scarf, for example, the next day I'm sick (usually throat pain first)... These coincidences are pretty consistent in my experience, and they would merit explanations (better than just 'you spend more time indoor during the cold season' which is a general statement not explaining the individual coincidences like 'I get out in the cold once and I get sick'). Simon Lacoste-Julien 22:05, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Han-Kwang (talk) 10:25, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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Close quarters, but also all irritants have been shown to increase concentrations of ICAM-1, the rhinovirus receptor. Cold weather is another irritant to the respiratory tract, so might increase ICAM-1 just like all sorts of irritants and allergens do. As well cold/humid weather tends to produce cold-like symptoms that might increase the transmission of the virus eg., sneezing and wiping etc. Ie cold weather uses the tricks that the virus uses to spread.. and might increases receptor levels to the virus.. BTW I don't think a "low" immune system explains it except that a immune *reaction* for whatever reason can affect ICAM-1.. Err.. at least in most cases, of course you can get ill from extreme cold.. Also of course the school system beginning in september around the world as well as just a fluke of periodicity in virus levels all explain it, need we more explanation? In this case all help to explain, and no, lots of explanations do not mean that we don't know the right one. (posted around March 2005)

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Someone added to the main text that there is no evidence that chilling increases risk of getting the common cold. The BEST of these studies have been done using specific viral "loads" on subjects and having a treatment arm and a placebo arm. This doesn't exclude the possibility that cold weather affects the transmission.. And increasing the closeness of people and affecting the sneezing and wiping which is how the virus spreads is not the only way this might happen.. I agree with the poster so I didn't edit it just wanted to comment that alot of people misuse the data, not necessarily misused here

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The real question is, why does nearly everyone in the world believe strongly that cold simply causes the common cold? It's always "come in and dry off, you'll catch a cold" or "wear a jacket, you'll catch a cold" and inevitably they're right.. or perhaps they would have eventually been right anyway?

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Please notice that there is a comprehensive discussion about the relationship between chilling and common cold in de:Diskussion:Erkältung. Apokrif 16:48, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

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I have always heard the explanation that being inside in winter causes colds, but it has never made sense to me. It may contribute, but what about in the summer? I live in Washington, D.C., and I can tell you, being outside here in August is no more pleasant than in January. True, there is no school, and some people do go outside, especially to pools, but there are a lot of people who avoid going outside as much as possible. I go out more now (January) than in August. And what about people farther south, like in Florida? I used to go down to visit my grandparents in Florida once or twice a year. If we visited for Christmas, we'd go outside all the time; if it was summer, we'd spend most of the time inside with the AC. And this wasn't Miami or anything, it was northern Florida, Jacksonville. I just don't see how colds can be so common in winter and so rare at other times without some other explanation.

I'm going to throw this out as a possible counter-argument: whether it is summer or winter, the enironment is about the same indoors. Most people spend most of their time indoors-- even if they're athletic, they're still only spending a few hours a day outside. Would there really be much difference in our external environments from one season to another?

Back to my original arguement: could there possibly be a connection between people showering more in the summer? I know I do. I also know that, despite spending almost all of my time inside in both August and January, I have to shower more in August. This doesn't make sense according to what I just said in the last paragraph. Could it be humidity? Could the change, whatever it is, also contribute to colds? Could people showering less contribute?

Check the section below. If it has any validity, there's your answer-- temperature and humidity do in fact affect colds. One last thing, is there any reason we're doing these horizontal bars? Twilight Realm 22:49, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

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Horrible reference...

"However, researchers at the Common Cold Centre at the University of Cardiff [8] recently demonstrated that cold temperatures can lead to a greater susceptibility to viral infection. They showed that a group of people who sat with their feet in cold water for 20 minutes a day for a week had a 1 in 3 chance of developing cold symptoms during that week, while a control group who sat with their feet in an empty bowl had a 1 in 10 chance. It is thought this may be due to cold temperatures reducing blood circulation needed to carry white blood cells to the area of infection."

Why is the reference to this a news article with no reference to the actual study? The only other study I see by the Common Cold Centre is this. It concludes that 13/90 people that had cold feet had symptoms and there was 5/90 in the other group that showed symptoms. With numbers like that how do you come up with 1/3 and 1/10? With a conclusion quoted below

"Acute chilling of the feet causes the onset of common cold symptoms in around 10% of subjects who are chilled. Further studies are needed to determine the relationship of symptom generation to any respiratory infection."

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There is no scientific evidence to suggest that exposure to cold weather causes the common cold. Period. The NIH, which is -I think- one of the most reliable sources for health information, does not support the unfounded claim that cold weather causes colds: http://www.niaid.nih.gov/factsheets/cold.htm

I should also point out that some of you are confusing two separate concepts: rhinitis associated with the cold virus and rhinitis associated unknown etiology (i.e. idiopathic rhinitis). The former concept is relevant to this article, the latter is not. A study that shows a possible link between idiopathic rhinitis and exposure to cold temperatures has absolutely no relevance to this article, by the simple fact that the common cold is not an idiopathic illness. Moreover, it should be intuitively obvious that a study linking idiopathic rhinitis to cold exposure in no way implies a link between cold exposure and the rhinitis associated with viral infection. Jay Litman 14:58, 22 September 2006

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Scientific or no, many people have noted the correlation between cold weather and increased illness with "a cold" (or the flu for that matter). I have directly observed this in my own household over the course of 3 years. Can it be coincidence that my two kids both get sick 5-7 times during the colder weather here in northern Virginia (about 6 months of the year), and 0-1 times during the warmer weather the rest of the year? Whether or not there is a direct cause and effect may be debatable, but the correlation in my mind is beyond question.

Perhaps the "cold weather" is sufficiently different from simple "cold conditions" to have evaded detection in the studies? --greenmoss 01:55, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

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No. Your kids get sick because they are in contact with other sick people. There is a seasonal pattern to the common cold, but it's probably not the cold as such. See e.g. flu season. In my experience, it can be freezing and soddy weather, but if you're not in close contact to people who have the cold, you don't catch it yourself either. Keep yourself informed, and -be responsible- keep those around you informed, be hygienic, you know the drill... When I was still a high-schooler I always caught the cold; however in college people are allowed to be responsible and stay at home if they catch the cold - and the number of times I caught the cold dropped dramatically. Shinobu 02:50, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

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So, we have several non-scientists concluding that exposure to cold causes the cold based on personal observation. Interestingly enough, the process of obtaining scientific knowledge is a little more involved than making casual observations at home and rakishly speculating as to the cause of those phenomena. Such casual observations are, at best, the makings of a hypothesis. Although there is a statistical association between the winter months and increased incidence of cold virus infections, this association alone does not prove that exposure to cold weather causes colds (obviously, as statistical association never implies a cause-and-effect relationship, and there are also plenty of confounding variables affecting one's susceptibility to the cold wirus). Apparently, the NIAID reference wasn’t enough. Here are some more articles that water down the science enough for most people to understand: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5184405 http://www.hhmi.org/cgi-bin/askascientist/highlight.pl?kw=&file=answers%2Fimmunology%2Fans_023.html http://uuhsc.utah.edu/healthinfo/adult/infectious/cold.htm

Although the ‘cold weather’ hypothesis has clearly been falsified, there are other standing hypotheses regarding cold infections and the winter months (as one can see in the above references) that could be worked into this article, if worded properly. User:Jay Litman 05:00, 23 September 2006

You can have too much faith in science, too. Experiments tend to be too controlled to consider all possible factors. Scientists can be just as naive in their faith in science as lay people can be in their faith in experience. It is probably too complex an issue to easily determine whether exposure to certain weather conditions affects whether people get colds. Although personal experience is not always trustworthy, I think in this case there is too much repeated experience to ignore. 24.68.180.163 21:15, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

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So we're actually using a reference to a faulty study? That's bad... Shinobu 15:51, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Studies and experience aside, I think we can agree that being cold or having wet hair will not make someone sick. Becoming infected with a virus may make you sick, and certain conditions may suppress your imune system, but simply walking around with wet hair cannot make you sick. Can we remove that reference from the article? Or at least require it to be cited.

Cures?

• Early recovery from cold is simple, at the moment of "Cold ?" use a simple gauge mask to kepp warm and humid the nose by own breath. Continue for one or two days even during sleeping and working. With warm pads around neck will help quicker recovery. For detail

http://iccincsm.tripod.co.jp or mail to iccinc@f6.dion.ne.jp

Satoshi mochizuki(Ph.D.)

• I want a second opinion - is this blankworthy as an infomercial? Thanks. -- Pakaran 01:32, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
• sounds accurate,it really does not replicate well at body temperature thus infects only the nasopharynx region and above, but not below throat.. Also the higher temp should make mucociliary clarance easier so sympoms aren't so bad..

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Does anyone have a problem with including information about zinc gluconate with regard to shortening the duration of colds? Here are some of the studies: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Display&dopt=pubmed_pubmed&from_uid=15499830

Sublium 21:29, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Reportable Disease?

• "Until the 1980s, by law, the common cold was not a reportable disease. "

Which law? Where? Jonathanriddell 21:03, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• In the United States (possibly Canada). Compton Encyclopedia 1963 says "The common cold is not a reportable disease under the law. Because of this, there are no reliable official statistics as there are for [..] other communicable diseases. In order to estimate its frequency, one must rely on various types of surveys..such as those made by the Public Health Service" I'm not sure where the 1980s bit came. Rhymeless 02:53, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

"Most common of all diseases"

I thought that was tooth decay. Neutrality^talk 00:40, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)

I doubt it. Actually, the article says it's the second most common. That seems questionable, but I'll see that article's Talk page. Twilight Realm 22:52, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Coryza

Coryza currently redirects to this page, but the term does not appear on this page at all. Could someone with the necessary knowledge please either add something to the page explaining the term, or remove the redirect if it's not appropriate?

"Cardiff-study"

In the chapter "cold as misnomer" the text They showed that a group of people who sat with their feet in cold water for 20 minutes a day for a week had a 1 in 3 chance of developing symptoms during that week, while a control group who sat with their feet in an empty bowl had a 1 in 10 chance might be a little misleading. The evidence given in the quoted abstract [2] sounds a little different to me, but I do not have access to the paper in full text. Could anyone with knowledge about the whole article please verify whether 1) they have been cooled daily for one week or just once, and 2) 13/90 vs. 5/90 or 1/3 vs. 1/10 "suffered from cold" or "developed symptoms" ?? Thanks in advance, your information will be wellcome for our discussion in de:WP --JHeuser 10:47, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

"Stress and the immune system"

Anytime the body is under great stress, such as being too cold, will have an undesirable effect on the immune system. Being too cold can and has been a major contributing factor in wether or not a person is able to defend itself against ilinesses. In this case, cold weather can cause a person to catch the common cold or any illness. It would be vey unwise to allow your body to be too cold for any extended period of time. 10 January 2006

Wikipedia:Verifiability Apokrif 15:52, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Experiments show that the state of your immune system is irrelevant to whether or not you will catch a cold.

Why am I being blocked?

I want to include the following revised paragraph in the "Common Cold" page, but am being blocked.

"Zinc-containing preparations (zinc lozenges) have been claimed to be effective in the treatment of cold infections. One study attributed efficacy to a placebo effect related to the strong and unpleasant taste of improperly prepared zinc lozenges (Reference: Farr et al. (1987)). Efficacy of zinc lozenges studied by Farr et al. was prevented by addition of citric acid to the lozenges (reference Eby). Further research showed that zinc lozenges prepared with zinc gluconate and any sweet carbohydrate except fructose become extremely bitter upon aging, an effect that does not occur with zinc acetate. Consequently, all over the counter zinc gluconate lozenges have been "flavor-masked" with citric acid, glycine or ascorbic acid, thus eliminating ionic zinc and efficacy. Only at physiologic pH 7.4 do zinc ions count, and these food acids eliminate them as shown in this solution chemistry computation. Generally, zinc lozenges reduce the duration of common colds in a dose dependent manner for positively charged ionic zinc at pH 7.4, with 5 to 7 day reductions in duration being possible. Zinc nasal sprays do not shorten colds and the reason is explained in the Discussion section of this article."

What is so wrong with the above? I (George Eby, homepage http://coldcure.com email: george.eby.2006 "at" coldcure.com ) discovered the zinc for common cold effect and someone is blocking presentation of the truth? Why? I want to learn how to block too! Georgeeby,205.238.154.148 February 1, 2006

Wikipedia has a strict No original research policy to ensure the unbiased neutrality of its content. Other editors may cite your work, if they don't, you shouldn't either. Since you also have a financial gain from publicizing your website, and have been warned before at 205.238.154.148, it would be advisable not to add any more links. Femto 13:43, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

• to Femco from Georgeeby, Thank you. I am beginning to understand.

There are strict Wikipedia guidelines requiring a neutral point of view in all articles. This includes not citing your own work, and not including numerous links to commercial web sites, such as yours. In my opinion, the overwhelming scientific consensus is that zinc preparations are unlikely to have any affect on rhinovirus.

I have not read the entire article of your meta-analysis, but given that the common cold only lasts about one to two weeks, I am very surprised that you claim a decrease in duration of 7 days. If this were true, you should be able to raise substantial venture capital to further your research and commercialize your products.

I would be interested in learning why no company has invested the time and effort into the required in vitro mode of action studies, preclinical toxicology studies, dose ranging studies, human safety studies, and adequate and well-controlled efficacy clinical studies to obtain FDA approval of any zinc preparation. Certainly not because a cure for the common cold would not be very lucrative, but probably because no pharmaceutical company is convinced of the scientific value of your research.

71.141.243.10 03:38, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

• to Femco from Georgeeby. You raise good questions. Glad to answer. Most of the material needed for understanding is in the above two peer-reviewed articles. I licensed my patents to Bristol Myers Products in the 1980s and Warner lambert in the 1990s and a number of other companies including Quigley. Each of these companies had a single guiding theory that led to comercial failure of the basic discovery. That idea was that the lozenges had to taste like candy. Afterall, there were really good tasting common-cold throat lozenges already on the market, in both the United States, Europe and elsewhere. In these company's "marketing" opinion, the zinc lozenges had to taste good. VERY STRANGELY, zinc gluconate has the extremely unique problem of reacting with all sweet carbohydrates except fructose (as was used in the successful Medical Research Council Common cold Unit trial of zinc gluconate against rhinovirus-induced common colds) to become truly the most bitter tasting substance known. It tasted very much like sucrose octaacetate (an extremely bitter substance). This flavor-instability problem took 2 weeks to 2 months to develop in situ. This problem led these companies to add chemical "flavor masks" to the lozenges to eliminate the bitterness. In the case of BMC it was citric acid (Farr et al). In the case of Warner Lambert (Turner et al.) it was by cooking zinc acetate with oleates, and stearates to produce a zinc wax (this was used only to eliminate the astringency of ionic Zn2+, since zinc acetate lozenges are not bitter). In the case of Quigley, it was by adding glycine. You can see the effect of these agents on the availablity of ionic zinc (importantly) at physiologic pH at http://coldcure.com/html/solution-chemistry.html. This figure's data is pre-summed for all positively charged species, thus it appears simplier than the published figures in "Zinc Lozenges: Cold Cure or Candy?", but it conveys exactly the same information. There were several studies that used zinc gluconate with sucrose etc, and the compliance with protocol (due to in situ bitterness) was so poor, no positive results were possible. Other studies were with the de-ionized zinc lozenges producing null results. Only the zinc lozenges that retained fully ionized zinc at physiologic pH worked. The best test of zinc acetate (without flavor-masking agents) was by Prasad et al. (http://coldcure.com/html/prasad.pdf). I made those 12.8 mg zinc (acetate) lozenges and his team tested them. Today, I market nearly idential 14 mg lozenges from http://coldcure.com. Patents have a life-time, and mine are nearly expired. It is highly unlikely that any major pharmaceutical company will venture into zinc lozenges for colds since there is inadequate patent protection. Do you see how flavor and taste issues caused marketing to lead science astray? Had zinc gluconate not had its weird taste issue, the cure for common colds would have been accepted years ago IMHO. There were very few repeated tests of idential formulas, with the exception of Cold-Eeze (Quigley). There is nothing wrong with the flavor and mild astringency of my 14-mg lozenges, and I sell them world-wide, but at a low level. In the U.S., zinc gluconate and zinc acetate are "homeopathic" for common colds. Consequently, 40 mg of zinc acetate (yielding 14 mg zinc) in a 4.0 gram lozenge produces a legal homeopathic 1X dilution, for which legal drug claims can be made without U.S. FDA approval (following certain homeopathic rules). Interestingly, only the Quigley company with its ZIGG lozenges, and me, use that law! None of my zinc acetate licensees (F&F Foods, Weider Nutrition, Quantum Health) would follow, why I do not know why. Had they, they would have had commercial products that would have been commercially huge. On the other hand, they chose to market their zinc acetate lozenges as "dietary supplements". There is a law in the U.S. that precludes "throat lozenges" from being dietary supplements. When the FDA pointed that out to them, two of them stopped selling product and the other sold product with nothing on the label mentioning "dietary suplements", although they could have used the available drug laws applicable, but they continued to refuse. Glad you asked? Obviously there is much more, but that is the guts of it. In short, one problem led to another, resulting in disrepute and failure. Once the chemically modified zinc lozenges failed in clinical trials, the big companies assumed that they could not market "bad tasting" lozenges regardless of efficacy and no further testing was done. I think they were wrong, at least for the zinc acetate lozenge product that I now market. Worse, in the U.S., commercial zinc lozenges sold at retail and on the web by many (countless) companies are "flavor masked" with citric acid, ascorbic acid and glycine, resulting in no efficacy. There are over 135,000 pages cited by http://google.com for "zinc lozenges", yet the number of effective zinc lozenge formulations is one. Therefore, the notion that zinc lozenges are ineffective against common colds is totally valid for those wide-spread, totally corrupted products. How does one compete in that environment? A bit of support and less redicule for me would go a long way.

Since I'm nowhere close to being a chemist or physician, I won't take part in any actual discussions on the content. That said, it should also be mentioned that contributions from (necessarily biased) expert editors are explicitly encouraged, actually—as long as the point is not pushed. Don't get frustrated when people don't pick up on it, and it's perfectly fine to put suggestions on the talk pages. Femto 16:09, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

It has been 27 years of frustration for me, George Eby.

Have you tried a tablet or capsule formulation in which taste is not an issue?71.141.243.10 03:54, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, and swallowed tablets and capsules have no effect, regardless of dosage. One can use the zinc acetate lozenges and not swallow the zinc-laden saliva with no adverse change in benefit. It is totally a local biophysical effect. Read the Discussion section of http://coldcure.com/html/zinc-nasal-spray.pdf to learn about the effects of the mouth-nose BCEC. It is very strange! But, it is the reason the cure for common colds was not discovered in about 1900, a hundred years ago when they were first experimenting with zinc and colds. georgeeby 2/5/2006

helpfull tips

i hate the common cold as im sure all of you do too but there is a very helpful treatment this is curry it is very helpfull in clearing your nose etc also COLD-FX is another awsome help you can find it in almost all canadian pharmacies!

John Wesley

"In the 18th century, John Wesley wrote a book about curing diseases; it advised cold baths as prevention and stated that chilling causes the common cold"

This doesn't make sense. Why would someone advise cold baths as a cold prevention, then state that cold caused the common cold? Seems like an error.

I think the idea is that continual exposure to cooler temperatures would make the person less likely to catch a cold. Certainly in the early part of the 20th century, being exposed to colder weather was seen as "good for the constitution". This may sound strange, but it was not so much the exposure to being cold, but the moving from warm to cold to warm. The idea that exposure to the cold would be good for you was pretty much demolished during the first world war. --One Salient Oversight 10:40, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Colds and (nonhuman) animals

Does anyone know whether (nonhuman) animals can get colds? If so, please add this information to the article (citing sources if possible). Dbtfz (talk - contribs) 23:48, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Try Googling "animal upper respiratory infection", without the quotes. Then do your own research and edits 71.141.243.10 03:42, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Egyptians and the common cold

The sentence about Egyptians seems dubious for two reasons. 1) It seems perfectly obvious that the Egyptians should know something as prevalent as the common cold, so why mention it at all? 2) The statement "there were hieroglyphs for cough and for the common cold" is trivial if the writing simply was phonetic. After all, you can write anything with a phonetic system. It is not trivial, if there indeed were dedicated ideograms for the common cold and coughing, but in that case a source should be mentioned. I checked some online dictionaries, which did not contain the ideograms, but bigger printed dictionaries may reveal some. Mlewan 11:29, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Inhabitants of cold countries

Moreover, if cold weather is directly linked to the spread of the common cold, then it would be easy to prove by comparing the infection rates of people who live in colder climates (such as Iceland or Greenland) with people who live in warmer climates (such as countries close to the equator).

Inhabitants of cold countries could have better clothes, or could have benefited from natural evolution. Are the people you refer to indigenes or inmigrants? Apokrif 18:27, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Picture on main page

The picture on the main page just bothers me for some reason; whether its the color or what, I'm not sure. Is it that apropro to put up a picture of someone sneezing? I'm sure everyone knows what sneezing looks like. Andrewr47 03:53, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Can't say I like or see much use in it either. Femto 12:10, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Bad resolution, distorted colours, psychedelic. Not informative. I don't have any better picture, but I'm sure it should be easy to find. Mlewan 19:31, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

It looks like an STD prevention advertisement. The points above taken into consideration, I think it's best to remove the image. Shinobu 08:50, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

minor, minor change

changed

"Although widely available and advertized in the United States...."

to

"Although widely available and advertised in the United States...."

because advertized is not right spelling-wise. I just thought people might want to know, as I'm not a "wiki-editor" or anything. 66.91.41.104 08:38, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Zinc Cold Remedy lawsuit

According to cited source, http://www.homeowatch.org/legal/zicam.html, the lawsuit was for "Seventy-five Thousand Dollars ($75,000.00)", and not, as this article says, $75,000,000 ($75 mil). I am correcting this. If I have missed something let me know. Dkordik 07:18, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

More common now than in the 1970s?

Is it just my imagination, or is the common cold far, far, far more common now than in the 1970s (at least in the United States)? I first noticed this around 1989, in fact, and the situation hasn't improved since. -- Unsigned comment

It would be interesting to know whether decreased hygiene is an issue. I know that back in the conformist 1950s and 1960s, handwashing was highly emphasized, and that's no longer the case. When is the last time you saw any patron in a restaurant walk in, wash their hands, then sit down to eat? -Rolypolyman 14:40, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

"The best way to blow your nose"

On the "Complications" section there is a passage saying "the best way to blow your nose is keeping both nasal openings open when blowing and wiping rather than fully covering them, permitting pressure to partially dissipate.". I have read numerous sites stating the contrary, that one should block one nassal passage while blowing the other, including http://www.ehow.com/how_9504_blow-nose.html

I did not operate any change on the page as i am no specialist in this domain, but i think it may be a mistake and should be taken in consideration for re-edit, as i found basically no reference recommending the statements made there.

unreferenced text removed G716 22:13, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Hydrogen Peroxide

OK, so this has been deleted from the main page, but I don't think it should have been:

Hydrogen peroxide has been claimed to prevent colds. A cotton swab is dipped in 3% solution of hydrogen peroxide and then used to clean the ear canal. The theory is that the cold virus incubates in the ear canal before spreading to the rest of the mucous membranes. So killing the virus while it is still in the ear canal aims to prevent the cold altogether.

This is what I wrote in the hydrogen peroxide talk article:

• I am the one who included this blurb, though originally with a different, admittedly "not very good" reference. I stumbled across the claim while looking for something to prevent me from getting the 6 or 7 colds a year I get nowadays. Doing a google search returns a lot more of these kinds of claims. Here was the original that I found. According to this, "pharmaceutical grade" 3% concentration should not be used internally; only diluted "food grade" should be used. This mentions a study by Richard Simmons regarding colds entering the body via the ear canal, and German research treating colds and flu with hydrogen peroxide. This mentions the same thing. Anecdotally, after finding this information I tried the solution mentioned above when I felt a cold coming on, felt something "odd" in my throat where the colds normally originate, and the cold disappeared. So it seems there is something to this. What do you think is required to get this put back in the main article, as it seems like this would be very useful information for people to have?

So what are the objections to this blurb? Can someone suggest improvements? If this does work (and my experience so far has been positive), it should be included in this article IMHO --greenmoss 11:45, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I've also gotten good results from putting peroxide in the ears as a preventive measure. Maybe it's just my imagination, but I read about this technique over 2 years ago, and haven't gotten a cold ever since. I think there is a deliberate conspiracy by Big Medicine to keep this technique covered up. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.5.222.57 (talk • contribs)

I don't know, but it seems like a lot of original research is involved here. The technique has to be validated through published research, not by your own personal experiences. It's still possible to include this piece of information as "X and Y claim that..." coupled with a reference. —LestatdeLioncourt 11:36, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Antarctica

I once heard that Antarctica (presumably the coldest place in the world) is the only location on Earth that is free from the cold. Is this true? It sounds plausible enough.. I mean, there isn't a permanent population there.
-Robin Chen 03:31, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

introduction accuracy

I'm wondering about the citation for a cold lasting 3 to 5 days as of 4:30pm EST Tue Nov 21, 2006. According to The National Institutes of Health:

“ Sneezing, scratchy throat, runny nose—everyone knows the first signs of a cold, probably the most common illness known. Although the common cold is usually mild, with symptoms lasting 1 to 2 weeks, it is a leading cause of doctor visits and missed days from school and work. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 22 million school days are lost annually in the United States due to the common cold.

In the course of a year, people in the United States suffer 1 billion colds, according to some estimates.

Children have about 6 to 10 colds a year. One important reason why colds are so common in children is because they are often in close contact with each other in daycare centers and schools. In families with children in school, the number of colds per child can be as high as 12 a year.

Adults average about 2 to 4 colds a year, although the range varies widely. Women, especially those aged 20 to 30 years, have more colds than men, possibly because of their closer contact with children. On average, people older than 60 have fewer than one cold a year.

”

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.106.69.155 (talk • contribs)

I don't think this contradicts the information in the article. The lead section says that the cold— i.e. the infection itself—lasts 3 to 5 days and that the symptoms (coughing) can last for 3 weeks. Likewise, the cited text says that the symptoms last up to two weeks. The only discrepency here is whether it's 2 or 3 weeks (but I guess that's a reasonable margin of error for a very general estimate). —LestatdeLioncourt 11:29, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

The following section concerns me: "Contrary to popular belief, scientists have now found that new strains of the virus can be deadly to the very young and elderly. Death is quite rare, and only 1 in 1 million healthy test subjects suffered death, but it is not impossible. This is much more common in the most vulnerable: the young, the elderly, and those recovering from surgery. In these cases, 1 in 50,000 test subjects died (note: the experiments were carried out on chimps, but the results in humans would probably be very similar)." Firstly, the statement does not have a citation. Secondly, I doubt the statements are accurate as presented. What new strains of the cold are deadly? When did 1 million chimps participate in a study of new strains? How does the chimp data relate to the young, old or immunocompromised. Certainly there are people who are so sick and frail that a serious upper respiratory infection can lead to death without proper supportive care, but it does not have to do with new strains or healthy people. I feel strongly that this statement does not belong in the article.

Hmmm.... -- Possibly related to RSV (??) (also see Falsey, Ann R. (July 13, 2000). "Respiratory Syncytial Virus Infection in Adults". Clinical Microbiology Reviews. 13 (3): 371–384. {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)) -- Boracay Bill 06:18, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

RSV infection may seem similar to the Common Cold (especially if you are not an infant or frail person), however, physicians call RSV infection Bronchiolitis. As such, I don't think that this section belongs in the intro to the Common Cold. 134.174.178.112 16:19, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup of "Treatment" section

There's a "may require cleanup" tag on the Treatment section. Any ideas about what the tagger has in mind? It seems to me to be a pretty nice and clear section; the intro especially is good. There's an obvious error in the "Antibiotics" subsection reference to fungi, which I will fix. HEL 18:10, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Eccles's study

"the study is seriously flawed because the researchers used symptom questionnaires instead of actual infection detection and failed to check whether the participants were already infected or not."

I think that in order to be neutral, we should rather say that the results are controversial (if Prof. Smith questions the accuracy of a study by Prof. Doe, what allows us to give more weight to Smith's opiniion than to Doe's)? I think the point in Eccles's study is that it assumes that a low temperatures does not help the infection itself, but the symptoms of common cold: http://www.medpagetoday.com/Pulmonary/URIstheFlu/tb1/2136 and also, perhaps because they are not sure which virus they should look for, because common cold can be caused by different viruses (Eccles thinks that a flaw in previous studies, which concluded there was no link between temperature and common cold, was that subjects were inoculated which only one specific virus). Anyway, if I understand well, the results of Eccles are based on self-reports by subjects, which can be a flaw. I think that instead of a few lines in a newspaper, the WP article should at least give the references of the original paper, and a link to the abstract if the full text is not available (I don't know how to write in the References section, in WP style, something like "I know this is the original paper, but I contributed to the article only on the basis of the paper's summary and the commentaries I read in various places") Apokrif 20:03, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

How many infections per year is common?

From the introduction:

It is the most common of all human diseases, infecting adults at an average rate of 2–4 infections per year, and school-aged children as many as 12 times per year. Infection rates greater than three infections per year per person are not uncommon in some populations.

That last sentence seems out of place; it reads as though "three" is higher than "2-4" or "12". If the average is 2-4, then why would it be necessary to mention that 3 is 'not uncommon'? ReddShadoe 21:54, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Cochrane meta-analysis: Vitamin C and the Common Cold (FYI)

Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2004 Oct 18;(4):CD000980.

Update of: Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2000;(2):CD000980.

Vitamin C for preventing and treating the common cold.Douglas RM, Hemila H, D'Souza R, Chalker EB, Treacy B.

National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, Australian National University, 34 Nungara Place, Aranda, ACT, Australia, 2614.

BACKGROUND: The role of oral vitamin C (ascorbic acid) in the prevention and treatment of the common cold has been a subject of controversy for at least sixty years. Public interest in the topic continues to be high and vitamin C continues to be widely sold and used as a preventive and therapeutic agent for this common ailment. OBJECTIVES: To discover whether oral vitamin C in doses of 200 mg or more daily, reduces the incidence, duration or severity of the common cold when used either as continuous prophylaxis or after the onset of cold symptoms. SEARCH STRATEGY: This updated review added to earlier searches, a full search of the following electronic databases: the Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (The Cochrane Library Issue 2, 2004); MEDLINE (January 1966 to June 2004); and EMBASE (1990 to June 2004). SELECTION CRITERIA: Papers were excluded if a dose less than 200 mg daily of vitamin C was used; if there was no placebo comparison; if methods of outcome assessment were inadequately described; and if the report did not record any of the three study outcomes (incidence, duration or severity) in sufficient detail to enter into the meta-analysis. Three criteria of study quality were assessed: Jadad scores, placebo distinguish-ability, and allocation concealment. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: Two reviewers independently extracted data and assessed trial quality. 'Incidence' of colds during prophylaxis was assessed as the proportion of participants experiencing one or more colds during the study period. 'Duration' was the mean days of illness of cold episodes and 'severity' of these episodes was assessed by days confined indoors, off work or school. or by symptom severity scores. MAIN RESULTS: Twenty-nine trial comparisons involving 11,077 study participants contributed to the meta-analysis on the relative risk (RR) of developing a cold while taking prophylaxis. The pooled RR was 0.96 (95% CI 0.92 to 1.00). A subgroup of six trials that involved a total of 642 marathon runners, skiers, and soldiers on sub-arctic exercises reported a pooled RR of 0.50 (95%CI 0.38 to 0.66).Thirty comparisons that involved 9,676 respiratory episodes contributed to the meta-analysis on common cold duration during prophylaxis . A consistent benefit was observed, representing a reduction in cold duration of 8% (95% CI 3% to 13%) for adult participants and 13.5% (95% CI 5% to 21%) for child participants.Fifteen trial comparisons that involved 7,045 respiratory episodes contributed to the meta-analysis of severity of episodes experienced while on prophylaxis. The pooled results revealed a difference favouring those on vitamin C when days confined to home and off work or school were taken as a measure of severity (p = 0.02), and when restricting to studies which used symptom severity scores (p = 0.16), and for the both measures of severity combined (p = 0.004).Seven trial comparisons that involved 3,294 respiratory episodes contributed to the meta-analysis of cold duration during therapy with vitamin C that was initiated after the onset of cold symptoms, and no significant difference from placebo was seen.Four trial comparisons that involved 2,753 respiratory episodes, contributed to the meta-analysis of cold severity during therapy and no significant difference from placebo was seen.In laboratory studies, differing methods of artificial transmission of virus to vitamin C or placebo treated volunteers in residential experiments gave different results. Volunteers infected by nasal installation showed small or no benefit from vitamin C, whereas a group who were infected more naturally, reported less severe symptom severity scores (p = 0.04). REVIEWERS' CONCLUSIONS: The failure of vitamin C supplementation to reduce the incidence of colds in the normal population indicates that routine mega-dose prophylaxis is not rationally justified for community use. But evidence shows that it could be justified in persons exposed to brief periods of severe physical exercise and/or cold environments. Also, the consistent and statistically significant small benefits on duration and severity for those using regular vitamin C prophylaxis indicates that vitamin C plays some role in respiratory defence mechanisms. The trials in which vitamin C was introduced at the onset of colds as therapy did not show any benefit in doses up to 4 grams daily, but one large trial reported equivocal benefit from an 8 gram therapeutic dose at onset of symptoms.

PMID: 15495002 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Alan2012 (talk • contribs) 16:34, 19 January 2007 (UTC).

Probability of catching a cold

"control group who were not exposed to the chill had a 1 in 10 chance (this probability corresponds with the implausible 1 in 239 chance of surviving a year without catching a cold)" Where does this 1 in 239 chance come from? Apokrif 22:59, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't know. None of the listed chances appear anywhere in the reference articles. Perhaps this should be removed to the talk page until a suitable reference can be found. The Wilschon 22:07, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I understand where the 239 came from; it's a basic application of statistics. The 239 came from the fact that (1-1/10)⁵² = 1/239, with the 52 being the number of weeks in a year. However, the experiment was actually done over 5 days, not a week, and it was 9% of the control group that developed symptoms, not 1/10, which results in the 239 figure not being very accurate. The 239 figure isn't in the original reference, so it must have just been calculated by an editor. I just now made the numbers in the article reflect the actual numbers in the experiment, and just got rid of the 1 in 239 aside.

The number of people who developed symptoms in the control group is not particularly unreasonable. 9% of a group developing cold symptoms in any given 5 day period corresponds to getting an average of 6.57 colds per year. The actual average is somewhere between 2-4 colds per year, so the 9% is a little on the high side, but not enormously so. My guess is that both the test group and the control group had to come in to the Common Cold Centre five or six times, which probably made both groups somewhat more likely than most people to have contact with people who have colds. This doesn't affect the important result of the experiment, which is that a significantly greater fraction of the test group developed cold symptoms than did the control group. MrRedact 00:02, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Translations of foreign-language names for "cold" please

The chart found under "Cold" as a misnomer would be immensely more informative if translations to English were included. The Wilschon 22:02, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

"Kaze" means "wind", not cold, so the Japanese name is related to the symptom of sneezing, not the cause, and certainly not cold as a cause. 'Kaze o hiku' means 'to pull wind', kind of implying that you're shooting air from your nose like arrows from a bow.

Sources?

Before pathology, it states:

Contrary to popular belief, scientists have now found that new strains of the virus can be deadly to the very young and elderly. Death is quite rare, and only 1 in 1 million healthy test subjects suffered death, but it is not impossible. This is much more common in the most vulnerable: the young, the elderly, and those recovering from surgery. In these cases, 1 in 50,000 test subjects died (note: the experiments were carried out on chimps, but the results in humans would probably be very similar).

And yet there are no citations for any of this, leading me to believe that this paragraph is either false, or up in the air.

There's also plenty other parts that need sources as well.

This paragraph, which was added by Jp kiddo on 2/5/07, appears to be subtle vandalism. I will remove it. MrRedact 20:56, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Cold v.s. Fever

Why is this disease called the Cold, while the other (which is actually a symptom, but let's forget that) called a Fever? Is one caught often as a result of being in cold surroundings, or results in the body having lower temperatures; whereas the other a result of being surrounded by too much heat, or results in the body being hot afterwards?

I know a fever is probably called that because it's symptoms are high body temp., and intolerance of cold temperatures. But the Common Cold is often viewed as a sort of "opposite" to the fever in society; was wondering if there is any truth to this view -- is the Cold called that because it results in lower body temp., or maybe it is CAUSED by cold temperatures? It doesn't appear to be a mirror of the fever.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.12.38.25 (talk • contribs)

Abnormally low body temperature is known as hypothermia, but it is not technically the "opposite" of fever—hyperthermia is (see the relevant articles for more detail). Colds are not caused by cold temperatures. This is a common misconception. It's just that people usually associate cold (as a medical condition) with cold temperature for various reasons. By the way, your question would probably be more appropraitely placed on the Reference Desk. —LestatdeLioncourt 15:10, 20 March 2007 (UTC)~

Coca-cola as a remedy?

Somebody had removed for this entry: "Coca-cola boiled with a lemon then drunk, can help with colds by warming your body temperature and caffeine helps performance and also usuable on cold days, better results if drunk just before bed." I believe a little more discussion should be made first, because the entry is not very rational. For instance, why would a lemon do such a difference? Does Coca-cola earm your body temperature? And even if it did, why would that relieve cold symptoms? However, as written earlier, "Coffee, or its active component, caffeine, has also been shown to improve mood and mental performance during rhinovirus infection.". Nevertheless, coffee is a better source of caffeine than Coca-cola, which therefore renders Coca-cola redundant in this case. Finally, why would it be best just before bed? Eiher the entry should be scientific proven by trials on people, or it should be rationally deductable. Mikael Häggström 07:25, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

American Lung Assoc recommends avoiding caffeine drinks. I have started work on this section and will continue later G716 06:42, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Tamagozake

I removed Tamagozake as a home remedy as use of alcohol is specifically not recommended in some of the authoritative references. The Tamagozake page, only cites a blog and a recipe web page.G716 07:52, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Tone issues

The recently added home remedy, Garlic, is not written in a formal tone - it reads more like something your grandmother might say than an encyclopaedia entry. D4g0thur 12:55, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Interferon-containing lozenges

I have removed the statement "Interferon-containing lozenges are currently being investigated as an alternative method of delivery." as I can find no reliable source. Amarillo Biosciences appears to be the only company developing interferon-containing lozenges, but not for the cold G716 07:08, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Good Article Review

I have brought this article to Good Article Review for review and possible delisting of its Good Article status. G716 07:39, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Delisted from Good Article status

Here are the comments from Good Article Review:

Nomination for delisting due to:

• many sections are very poorly referenced and there appear to be many unverifiable statements
• the pathology section discusses transmission, not the pathology
• the treatment section is poorly organized -- a mix of approved OTC drugs for symptom relief, palliative patient care, unproven supplements, experimental antiviral drugs, and folklore. G716 07:41, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

• Delist
  • The lead is currently an introduction rather than a summary of the article. It introduces information not expanded on in the article and also lacks any information from 'Prevention', 'Treatment', 'History', and '"Cold" as a misnomer'. This needs to be corrected per WP:LEAD.
  • Wikification of words like "nuclei" and "asymptomatic" per WP:CONTEXT, and US$" and "GB£" per WP:DATE#Currency. Removal of inconsistent wikification of years, decades, and centuries considering they don't really add context per WP:DATE#Dates.
  • The article is currently riddled with fact tags and cleanup templates.
  • The second half is very listy/stubby.
  • References are not consistently formatted, which is preferred by criteria 2b.
  • The article would benefit from some images as well. LaraLove^T/_C 16:14, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

• Delist - the mechanism of infection needs more elaboration. Avis12 18:28, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

G716 01:52, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, this review wasn't archived properly, but there ya go, it was delisted. Homestarmy 21:43, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Home remedy - Garlic

I marked this dubious. I realize that effectiveness of home remedies, aside from placebo effect, are probably expected to be dubious. The bit about "... the fumes of the garlic will soak through your system during the night" is a bit much, though. -- Boracay Bill 03:55, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Didn't you see that episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer? :-) Axl 21:31, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Treatment Section

I reorganized order of treatment section as follows:

==Treatment==
  ===Palliative Care===
  ===Antibiotics===
  ===Antivirals===
  ===Over-the-Counter Symptom Medicines===
  ===Herbal Remedies===
     ====Echinacea====
  ===Other===
     ====Vitamin C====
     ====Zinc Preparations====
     ====Interferons====
     ====Steam Inhalation====
     ====Chicken Soup====
     ====Home Remedies====

G716 16:25, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Steam Inhalation

The Italian - English Dictionary at WorldReference.com doesn't translate suffumigio, but lists suffumigare meaning fumigate G716 19:04, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Home remedies

I removed this section. All that is left are the following unsourced items. I'll be willing to add back in if anyone comes up with reliable sources.

• nebulized medicinal mixtures
• hot compresses
• Eating spicy food can help alleviate congestion, although it may also irritate the already-tender throat.

G716 05:56, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Incubation period conflict

This article says the incubation period is 1-3 days, but the rhinovirus article specifically says 8-10 hours. So which is it? -Rolypolyman 14:32, 24 August 2007 (UTC)