Study: Immune Response To The Common Cold May Weaken COVID Infections
The Claim
Study shows that the common cold effectively fights COVID-19.
News posted on
Emerging story
In mid-June, Yale University published a study that claimed that the common cold could help combat COVID-19. “Exposure to the rhinovirus, the most frequent cause of the common cold, can protect against infection by the virus which causes COVID-19,” a report explained. Researchers found that the common cold virus jump-starts an immune system response, which can slow a COVID infection within the body’s airway tissues.
Updates of this news have been posted across social media and have gained hundreds of interactions. Some of these posts have implied that coronavirus vaccines are unnecessary due to this discovery. For instance, the Facebook page Mad Diet stated that this news was not more widely spread due to some people making billions of dollars with “newfangled concoctions.”
Misbar’s Analysis
Misbar’s investigation found that many of these social media users are misunderstanding the limitations within these findings, especially regarding the timing of a subject’s infection. Vaccines are still the most effective means of preventing coronavirus infections.
The rhinovirus’s ability to combat COVID-19 is due to its jump-starting interferon-stimulated genes, which are early response molecules of the human immune system. These genes then work to halt the replication of the COVID-19 virus. However, these genes cannot be stimulated in perpetuity following the onset of the common cold.
Ellen Foxman, the senior author of the study, elaborated by stating the following: “It all depends upon the timing.” If the antiviral defenses become blocked, then COVID-19 can also replicate in airway tissue, even if it was exposed to rhinovirus.
Overall, the study highlights that introducing rhinovirus at the early stage of a COVID-19 infection can be critical in curtailing the spread of the latter virus. This can potentially be done by giving patients interferons in drug form to stimulate the immune system’s genes. Therefore, the study does not state that catching a cold provides long-term protection from coronavirus. Instead, it proposes a way of developing drugs via the rhinovirus to treat early-stage COVID-19 infections.
At present, researchers do not know the best methods of applying this potential treatment. As the study states, “It is unclear how early in infection these defenses function.” However, what was highlighted from the study was that the interferon-stimulated genes that fought COVID-19 were significantly more effective than mock-infected cells five days after rhinovirus infection.
It is also worth considering that these results were conducted in a clinical setting. The rhinovirus was not administered to human subjects. Instead, it was given to human bronchial epithelial cell tissue taken from eight healthy donors, with the tissue then being given rhinovirus and COVID-19 in an in vitro setting. As Scientific American has stated, lab testing can sometimes be subject to errors, and the results must be put into context. And in recent years, the Food and Drug Administration has placed additional focus upon real-world data and evidence to support its regulatory decision making, which highlights how this clinical study is just one step in applying this information effectively.
This study did not monitor the effectiveness of the rhinovirus in preventing COVID-19 by infecting tissue with COVID-19 over a period of time greater than five days after rhinovirus infection. In light of the many misinterpretations of these findings, we rate this news as commotion.
