Scientists Decode Cold Viruses

This discovery is far from nothing to sneeze at. Could a cure for the common cold be in the near future for rhinovirus sufferers?

The good news: 99 strains of the common cold are now easily identified. The bad news: it won’t make much of a difference if you catch one…or two. Scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison say that have genetically decoded nearly 100 strains of the cold virus. However, their ability to do some code-swapping will make it tougher to develop a vaccine against them. Ann Palmenberg, who led the three teams of decoders, says that it’s possible to catch more than one strain at a time. Those two strains can interchange DNA while in your body. But there is a chance to develop drugs that will fight various strains, now that they can be classified into 15 distinct families. Drug development is possible because a good part of the strains do have common genetic traits.