Common-cold guinea pigs keep going back for more

Press, 9 December 1983, Page 20

Common-cold guinea pigs keep going back for more

From

DIANA DEKKER,

in London

A nurse from a big cancer hospital in Manchester had her hard-saved spending money for a holiday to the Costa Brava stolen this year. Still, she managed to have a today break and, well fed and pampered, declares that the British Medical Research Council’s Common Cold Unit at Harvard Hospital, near Salisbury, is “sui "dy better than the Costa Brava.”

She remembers seeing an advertisement for volunteers for the unit — which has been seeking a cure for the common cold since 1946 — and was one of more than 500 “guinea pigs” who stayed there in the last year. “I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it and feel completely relaxed,” she says. Of the 13 people at the unit with her, only one caught a cold from an administered virus in the 10 days of their stay. No-one has ever been really ill as a result of the colds and flu administered at the unit. Only once was a volunteer not fit enough to go home at the end of his stay. He left the next day.

The Common Cold Unit is happily described by its head, Dr David Tyrrell, as "a sort of national institution as well as a national joke.” “It enhances both science and morale,” he adds. Scientists at the unit — which costs $550,000 a year to run — have found no definitive cure for the common cold, but they have made it a home -away from home for thousands of volunteers.

“In summer we have a waiting list,” says the Matron, Mrs Mar-

garet Andrews. “We get lots of tired housewives, a few exhausted nurses, one or two honeymoon couples, and many students. “The students come particularly in April when they are cramming for their annual exams. Many stay for a whole month. They all hope to become a dot in the ‘Lancet’.”

That and other aspirations — like helping research — certainly figure in the minds of many of the volunteers. But where else could you have a free, 10-day holiday with heated accommodation, meals, and travel thrown in? Volunteers have colour television, facilities for playing snooker, table tennis, and other sports. There is a beautiful surrounding countryside for walks (Wellington boots provided), whole-sale-priced beer, a 2000-book library, and even spending money. The chances of catching a cold are only one in three so it is not surprising that volunteers come back over and over again. There has to be a one-year gap between stays — which is probably the only thing preventing some people from taking up residence there permanently. “I’ll come back again, definitely,” says Steve Bunting, a computer operator. “I’ve enjoyed it so much.”

“Me too,” adds Philip Stearn, an unemployed marine engineer. “The food is marvellous. They almost look after you too well. Three

meals a day. You’re overfed really.” “One man has been here 26 times. He’s in the ‘Guinness Book of Records’,” the Matron recalls.

She herself has worked at the unit for nine years and has only had two colds — both of which, she is adamant, came from outside. “We have no more colds than other people.” Since the average person evidently gets from two to five colds a year, Mrs Andrews is healthier, cold-wise, than most. None of the multitude of volunteers at the unit are too worried by being prepared to receive — as their part of the bargain — an infectious inoculum of nasal drops containing common cold viruses — rhinovirus, coronavirus, or mild influenza virus. In fact, many of them serve as “negative controls” anyway and are given only nasal drops of “sterile physiological saline” — salt solution.

They are all told that have a one-in-three chance of developing symptoms of a cold. Those who do not end up sniffling and coughing might, however, have been infected “subclinically” and still have a virus growing in their respiratory tissues.

These infected volunteers, with or without symptoms of a cold, provide a rare laboratory tool, a highly controllable experimental model for study of human infections. The timing, incubation

period, and duration of the experimental cold is predictable, and severity of symptoms and the virological response can be measured accurately, and the model is reproducible more-or-less as and when required.

Medical research workers in a number of disciplines have made use of the Common Cold Unit. Dr Richard Totman, of Oxford University and Dr Joe Kiff, formerly of the Medical Research Council’s Unit for Epidemiological Studies in Psychiatry in Edinburgh, looked into psychosomatic aspects of human illness at the unit. One of their interesting findings was that introverted people tend to get more colds than extroverted people. Nevertheless, after all the volunteering and all the scientific questing, a cure for the common cold still eludes the staff at Harvard Hospital. They say they can tell you what won’t work — Vitamin C for instance.

“Linus Pauling will hardly talk to us but we have thoroughly experimented with it and Vitamin C does not prevent colds,” Dr Tyrrell says. (Dr Linus Pauling is an unremitting advocate of the powers of Vitamin C). The best way to treat a cold in its two or three-day acute stage is still to drink plenty of fluids to lubricate and soothe the inflamed mucus membranes, to take analgesics to relieve headaches and lower the temperature, and to remain quietly in a warm, well-ventilated room doing something which requires little or no concentration.

The final cure for the common cold may remain a mystery, but work at the Common Cold Unit, which has just been given the goahead to operate for at least another seven years, carries on. Currently the most important work is being done on Interferon (1.F.N.). Living cells when exposed to viruses produce I.F.N.

Scientists at the unit discovered 10 years ago that human leucocytes produced in white blood cells following exposure to a harmless virus could, given as a nasal spray, prevent experimental rhinovirus colds.

The trouble was that the total amount of I.F.N. needed to prevent a rhinovirus cold in one volunteer could only be produced from 30 to 50 donations of blood. It was hardly realistic to contemplate the use of I.F.N. produced by such means in the prevention of colds. Genetic engineering has now transformed the situation. There is the possibility of “instructing” rapidly multiplying bacteria to manufacture human I.F.N. to produce large amounts. Several manufacturers with whom scientists at the unit are collaborating are producing these human interferons for clinical trials.

It has long been clear to scientists at the unit that because there are hundreds of different viruses with correlations to colds that vaccination would never be a satisfactory method of cold control. Meanwhile, as winter sets in in Britain, one of the warmest and cheapest places to be, cold or no cold, is the Common Cold Unit.