Campus Connection

Researchers at the School of Medicine working in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have decoded the genetic sequence of rhinoviruses, the class of viruses that compose the common cold. 

Further research based on the decoded genome could lead to subsequent treatments for the cold, which could in turn stave off more serious illnesses. 

“We generally think of colds as a nuisance, but they can be debilitating in the very young and in older individuals, and can trigger asthma attacks at any age. Also, recent studies indicate that early rhinovirus infection in children can program their immune system to develop asthma by adolescence,” said Dr. Stephen B. Liggett, a co-author of the study which was published in the journal Science, in a press release. 

Potential medical treatments will likely target areas of the cold genome identified by the researchers as being highly “conserved,” or genes that are so essential to the function of the common cold that they remain unchanged despite evolution and mutation of the different varieties of cold viruses. 

Many roadblocks remain before patients will see medications that take advantage of these findings, including the reluctance of pharmaceutical companies to spend the hundreds of millions of dollars in development of a drug to treat such a mild disease and subsequent approval by the Food and Drug Administration to ensure that potential risks in side effects of the new drugs outweigh the inconvenience of a cold. 

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