What is it about this ubiquitous family of viruses (which is currently living large in my sinuses) that makes it so hard to cure or defeat? We’ve had almost a century to formulate something and the best we can come up with is still “rest and fluids.”
Why no cure?
Because there are umpteen thousands of different boogers that cause a cold.
I’m not certain that any viral infections are curable. All you can do is innoculate against them. Unfortunately this category of virus mutates zealously. I can innoculate you against known cold viruses and you will likely not get infected by them or if you do your symptoms will be milder. Unfortunately that does nothing for the next virus coming around the corner for which you have no innoculation.
So, it’s bed rest and fluids for most people.
[sub]NOTE: Each year it is possible to get innoculations for that year’s batch of beasties but they still don’t cover every possibility out there so you might still come down with something. [/sub]
Pardon the dissent from whack-a-mole’s comments, but many viral infections can sometimes be cured with the new antivirals. Rebetron for hep C, zovirax and others for H. Zoster, and lots of anti-HIV drugs that are prolonging life. Not to mention all those nice anti-influenza meds out now. They do work. Not perfectly, and not for all, they do halt some infections and eliminate the virus from some people.
I’m also not sure how would inoculate anyone against cold viruses; the medical profession generally doesn’t collect or stockpile antibodies for the rhino, adeno, picorna, respiratory syncytial, or coronaviruses. No real point. Too expensive to collect, for too little return, since the infections are self-limited and generally very mild.
Overall, over 200 viruses cause the common cold. To find one magic bullet to knock them all out, without killing the host organism (the cold sufferer) is far too daunting of a task. Recently the FDA refused to approve a cold virus drug, which did eliminate many of the cold viruses which cause infections; The stuff only shortened the course of the cold by one day when used under ideal conditions, while making other medications like birth control pills less effective. Have one less day without a cold, get another kid as a side effect? Baaaaaad tradeoff. To get approval, an anti-cold drug will have to be very, very, very safe, and very effective. More dangerous drugs get approved constantly, as they are for combatting far more dangerous diseases. Relative risk and all that.
And note well the the annual innoculation that is spoken of above is for the influenza virus, not the cold virus. Influenza is a far more serious disease which still causes thousands of deaths a year. The anti-influenza drugs available currently do save lives. Each year the CDC makes its best guess as to which strains of influenza will be making the rounds, makes massive antibodies to the most likely candidates, and mass distributes them. Sometimes they guess right, sometimes they guess wrong. However, as a public health policy, it is a very wise move.
QtM, MD
No need for pardons on your part. You are far and away more of an expert on this than I am and I happily defer to you on this for the Straight Dope (among other things I was confusing influenza with the common cold).
My only exception to what you wrote is claiming cures for viral infections when you yourself say they are not perfect and don’t work for all people. To my mind for something to be claimed a ‘cure’ it should have a pretty significant success rate. I’ve read of some of the ‘cures’ for HIV and the people who respond to these drug cocktails eventually showing no signs of the infection. However, I read about one guy (sorry…I don’t have a cite at the moment) who agreed to discontinue his drug treatment. When he stopped there was no sign of infection but after awhile it reappeared. It would seem that this ‘cure’ was just holding the infection at bay. While that is a good thing I wouldn’t call it a cure.
It just depends on the definition of “cure” one chooses to use, whack. If a medication causes a person with a disease to no longer have that disease, I call that a cure, even if it does not universally affect all people this way. Otherwise we have no cures, because no drug works 100% of the time on 100% of the people.
I’m sorry if this is too much of a tangent, but assuming we did wipe out the common cold and the flu like we did smallpox, what would be the effect of letting your immune system go idle for years on end?
Recent studies have indicated that without continuous ‘excercise’, your immune system may begin to attack your own body. Rats kept in hyper-sterile conditions have been shown to develop all kinds of nasty auto-immune problems. This isn’t conclusive (yet), and so far only extends to rats, but the implications are strong, and worth considering carefully.
don’t worry, hazel-rah. There’s plenty of other antigens and diseases to keep our immune systems humming along nicely.
Have they? I’ve never read anywhere about any antivirals eliminating viruses from a person. Anti-HSV medication can eliminate symptoms in some people, but it can’t elimate the latent ganglial infection, as far as I know.
Are these cases of actual curing of viral disease ancedotal or documented anywhere?
I agree. I just think for a ‘cure’ to b elabelled a ‘cure’ it should have a significant success rate at actually curing people…not just hiding the symptoms or disease.
alphagene, again it depends on your definitions. anti-influenza medications interfere with viral reproduction, and lead to a dramatic drop in the viral loads quickly after initiation, and seem to cause the body to clear the virus from the system much faster than it is able to normally. Is that a cure? I’d call it so.
whack, if a drug is shown to reduce the length or severity of a disease state significantly over placebo, is that not at least partial evidence that it might be called curative? This is not to claim that “insulin cures diabetes” for example, as it only treats the mechanism of pathology, ie elevated blood sugars. But if Taxol treatment results in more women being breast-cancer free in 5 years than no taxol does, I feel one can say “taxol can help to cure some cases of breast cancer”.