THE COLD WARS

                              Wrapping a dirty sock around your neck.  Drinking the milk of a woman wh has given birth to a boy.  Putting skunk oil on your chest.  Sipping elephant-dung tea.
                              Throughout history, humankind hascome up with lots of wacky "treatments" for the common cold.  And modern science hasn't fared much better: Even though it's the world's most prevalent illness, we still don't have a cure.
                              Dr. Birgit Winther, an otolaryngologist and part of a cold-research team at the University of Virginia, is one of the top experts on the subject.  For 30 years, this tidy, petite scientist has studied the untidy subject of sneezes, coughs, and running noses.  She's the kind of fearless researcher who weighs dirty tissues, harvests mucus from swollen nostrils, and smears it on phones and light switches.
                             Not a glamorous job, but it's all in the name of vanquishing a universal --- and universally debilitating ---disease.  Each of us gets as many as 200 colds in a lifetime, adding up to some five years of sickness and asmuch as a year in bed.  Colds annually send Americans to the doctor 100 million times, account for over 1.5 million ER visits, and keep kids home from scchool more than 20 million days.  The estimated yearly cost?  A staggering $40 to $60 billion. 
                            Despite the fact that colds are ubiquitous, we'resurprisingly clueless about their causes and treatments.  Here, at the height of the sick season, areWinter's six truths about the common cold.

1. We're our own worst enemies.   "For years, scientists thought cold symptoms resulted from damage done by the cold viruses themselves," Winther says.  As it turns out, all that sneezing, coughing, and congestion is actually caused by our own bodies.  In response to an intruding virus, our immune systems pump out chemicals that cause our noses to run, heads to throb, and throats to swell.  "One cold differs from another because of the way the host body responds," Winther says.  That explains why you may come down with a killer cold while your spouse has barely a sniffle, even though you both have the same virus.  It also explains why some immunity boosting products may not help.  "Getting your immune cells to work better could result in a stronger inflammatory response and more exaggerated symptoms," Winther says.  A colleague of hers once took immunity-enhancing drugs to speed his recovery, and "he'd never been so sick in his life!"
2. Yourmother was right: Wash your hands --- and don't touch your face!   To avoid getting sick, Winther  washes her hands often, especially after contact with anyone who's ill or after events that involve hand-shaking.  She also tries not to touch her face, especially her nose and eyes, where viruses like to enter our bodies.  This is tougher than it sounds: Studies suggest that many of us touch our faces hundreds of times a day and ---eww---pick our noses as often as five times an hour.  Even health-care providers are guilty.  Winther's colleagues secertly observed university medical staff during a one-hour lecture---and found that one -third of them rubbed their eyes and picked their noses.
3. Don't touch that doorknob, either!   The best way to not get a cold, Winther says,is easy: Be touchy about what you touch.  In their now-famous 2007 studies, she and her colleagues found that cold viruses brought into hotelrooms by guests found their way onto dor handles, pens, light switches, faucets, remote controls, and telephones - and stayed there for up to 18 hours.  "Surfaces are far more important than we ever imagined in the spread of colds," Winther says.  When someone is sick in her home, she scrubs frequently touched surfaces at least once a day, either with a general cleanser or plain soap and water.  So how has the doctor fared in her own cold war?  In the past couple of years, Winther has beaten the odds and come down with just one cold.
4. Simple remedies are still the best.   "Treat the individual symptoms that bother you most," Winther advises.  Her step-by-step plan: At the first sign of symptons, take ibuprofen to ease sore throat, headache, and malaise.  If a stuffy nose is a problem, add an OTC nasal spray.  For a runny nose, use a prescription spray (especially useful if you must be around people the first three days of a cold, the most contagious time).  Old-style antihistamines, such as Benadryl or Chlor-Trimeton, can also alleviate cogestion and sneezes but may make you drowsy.  Whatever you do, Winther cautions, do not take antibiotics.  They kill bacteria, not viruses.  Doctors prescribe them more than 40 million times a year, which has led to more lethal, drug-resistant strains of bacteria.
5. There IS no cure for the common cold ---not yet anyway.   Though Winther and her co-workers have researched countless remedies over the years, "they've all been dead ends."  To wit: The "Killer" tissues that zapped cold viruses ---but made people cough.  Or the medication that shortened colds by a day ---but made birth-control pills go haywire.  And all those concoctions of goldenseal, garlic, and other naturalingredients that are sold at health-food stores?  Still unproven.  For years, experts held high hopes for antiviral drugs, which either attack viruses directly or interfere with ability to latch on to cells.  Alas, Winther sighs, "cold viruses are smarter than we are."  They hide in our cells and do much of their work before our symptoms appear.  By the time we realize that we have a cold and take an antiviral, it's too late.  What about a vaccine?  Colds are caused by a menagerie of hundreds of different viruses.  Since vaccines are designed to target only a few strains, we'd still be vulnerable to the others.
6. But there IS hope.   "Until recently, I thought I'd done everything I could with the common cold,"  Winther says.  "I was ready to retire."  Then along came genomics.  "Suddenly there was this new science that could help us prevent colds based on our genetic individuality."  Different people may benefit from different treatments or tolerate certain drugs better, she says.  "We can look at how their genes affect these things and tailor medication accordingly."  For example, one strain of the "good" probiotic bacteria known as Lactobacillus GG appears to reduce cold symptoms by tamping down the body's inflammatory responses.  But does it work better in some people than others?  Winther is using genomic testing to find out.  Ina recent study, she gave subjects Lactobacillus GG in juice form, then took samples of their blood and nasal washes and analyzed their gene activity to see which genes grew active in respose to the cold virus.  As for a vaccine, "Ten years ago, I would never have thought we could make one," she says, "but with genetic technology, we can juggle antigens ---the building blocks of vaccines ---in ways we couldn't imagine before.  So eventually, it may be possible to make a vaccine that can handle hundreds of different viruses."

                          DON'T   TRY   THESE  AT  HOME
Over the centuries, people have gone to extremes to get rid of their sniffles and aches. 
A few radical remedies:

• Smearing goose grease on your chest and wrapping it with flannel.
• Rubbing the soles of your feet with tallow and turpentine, and holding them against a wood stove.
• Getting passed three times under a horse's belly.
• Having a fish skin tied to your feet.
• Cupping, followed by blood-letting.
• Going to sleep wearing a pair of cold, wet socks with a pair of thick, dry socks on top of them.
• Stuffing your nostrils with cut garlic cloves.
• Pressing a warm, peeled hard-boiled egg to your forehead.
• Eating snakeskin.