News |

KISSING ALMOST HAS A CLEAN BILL OF HEALTH IN THE COLD-PASSING

Arriving home from work, I offered my wife a handshake instead of a kiss, explaining that I was getting a cold and there was less chance of her catching it if we simply shook hands.

”As usual,” she said, ”you have it wrong. I read that news item, too, and it said that a handshake is more, not less, likely than a kiss to transmit cold virus.”

There was only one way to proceed: to talk with Dr. Eliot C. Dick, professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin Medical School. According to Dick, you and your ”roommate” have about a 38 percent chance of giving each other colds, whether you shake hands, kiss or whatever.

And Dick did not just pick this figure out of the virus-laden air. He and several colleagues did an experiment on young married couples in which they inoculated one member with a cold virus. In 38 percent of the cases, the cold was transmitted to the other member. It was also noted that all couples who transmitted colds spent at least 122 hours together during a seven-day period. ”The truth is,” Dick said, ”it is very difficult to transmit a cold.” He didn`t pick that fact out of the air, either. He relied on 30 years of study that started when he trained at a Tulane University laboratory with Dr. William J. Mogabgab, who discovered the rhinoviruses, the several hundred viruses that give us colds.

Since coming to the University of Wisconsin in 1961, Dick has participated in extensive colds research. In one experiment, persons infected with a cold virus kissed 16 uninfected people–for one minute or 1.5 minutes in two 45-second sessions, and in only one instance was the cold passed on.

In other experiments, infected and uninfected volunteers have been confined to small dormitory rooms or assembled in larger groups for long poker games.

From all of this, Dick concludes that the rate of transmission of cold viruses is in direct proportion to the amount of time involved.

”It is pretty much chance,” he said, ”and the more time you spend around someone who has a cold, the better chance you have of getting it.”

Dick also said it is a myth that you can come down with a cold by getting chilled or wet, and this information has been borne out through experimentation. The virus must be involved, he said, and added that the reason we get more colds in the winter is because we are more closely confined with each other, making it easier to pass the viruses to others.

In order to do its dirty work, a cold virus must get at the cells of the mucous membrane inside the nose, Dick explained. In this sensitive area, only one particle will result in the seven-day cycle of misery. But on the outside of the nose, Dick said as many as 11,000 particles can be present before a person is infected.

Children are more susceptible to colds than adults because they have not built up immunities to the viruses. The older you get the more immunity to colds your system should have.

Studies have failed to find a positive benefit from ingesting vitamin C to fight or inhibit a cold, but Dick said he is planning another study this spring that he hopes will settle the matter.

The rhinoviruses are so numerous that the search for a cold vaccine has been put on hold. For this reason, and because the cold viruses are so difficult to transmit, Dick said the fight against the common cold may best be waged in the arena of transmission.

In this regard, interferon, an experimental byproduct of gene splicing, has been found to destroy cold viruses before they can be passed on. It does not yet have approval of the Food and Drug Administration and is not available on the market.

Another cold-fighting product Dick has been involved with is virus-killing facial tissue. In an experiment with a closely confined community in Antarctica, iodine-treated tissues are credited wih successfully stemming a cold epidemic in 1979.

Subsequently, new virus-killing agents were found, namely a mixture of citric acid, malic acid and sodium lauryl sulfate, a soap.

These ingredients were used by Kimberly-Clark Corp. in a ”virucidal tissue” product called Avert and test-marketed in New York under the Kleenex name.

Tina Barry, director of communications for the company, said the tests showed that buyers were apparently not willing to pay the extra money for the treated tissue. The cost was about twice that of regular tissue.

Avert is now being test-marketed to hospitals, day-care centers, nursing homes and other institutional markets, Barry said.

Dick said there is no question about the product`s effectiveness. ”It is well established that the viruses are airborne,” he said, ”and if you kill them before they get into the air, you stop their transmission. One square inch of the treated material kills one million virus particles in one minute.”

In the absence of the treated tissues, however, Dick said that cold victims should use regular tissues with restraint. As he spoke, he pulled a tissue out of a box on his desk and said, ”Cover all of your nose, like this, and then blow very gently,” which he did. ”Then you put the tissue in the waste basket,” which he also did.

Tonight when I go home, I can show Betty how a professional ”cold” man blows his nose. She will probably appreciate that about the way she did the handshake.