It turns out Grandma was right all along. A new study in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology refutes the claim that catching what Grandma would call “the death of cold” is an old wives’ tale.
In fact, a newly-discovered immune response inside the nose actually can trigger a respiratory illness like RSV, Covid, the common cold and flu — which vindicates Grandma and makes the naysayers wrong.
It’s “a finding that challenges the conventional wisdom that infections spread because people are stuck indoors and signposts ways to develop new treatments,” Forbes reports.
“Based on experiments exposing nasal cell and tissue samples to three viruses that cause the common cold — two rhinoviruses and a coronavirus (not the one responsible for Covid-19) — the research showed the nose also uses the tactic to defend against viral threats.”
SOURCE:
Forbes December 6, 2022