Curing the common cold is one of the elusive holy grails of modern medicine. A University of Iowa research team is studying how to prevent colds from being spread in the first place. Robert Walters says they’re analyzing what’s called an adenovirus which causes colds.Walters is part of the U-of-I Medical Scientist Training Program and is lead author of the study. He says they’re learning how the adenovirus enters the body and inflicts enough damage on the defense systems and proteins to force through cold infections which rapidly reproduce and make a person sick.Walters sees the research underway in Iowa City eventually leading to something like a cold shot, much like today’s flu shots.Or a small-molecule drug could be developed, just like you take a drug now to keep your blood pressure low, you could take a drug to prevent you from spreading viral infections. The study is being published in the September 20th issue of the journal “Cell”.
