Remedy for common cold could arrive next fall
By Anita Manning, USA TODAY
CHICAGO — Scientists say they may be closing in on a long-sought improvement on Mom's chicken soup — an anti-viral treatment for the common cold.
An experimental drug, pleconaril, targets a group of cold germs called picornaviruses, easing symptoms and shortening the cold's duration. If approved, it would be the first anti-viral cold medication and could be on the market by next fall.
Picornaviruses are responsible for about two-thirds of all common colds, says Harley Rotbart, a professor of pediatrics and microbiology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver.
There are 160 to 170 different picornaviruses, he says, "and each of them can cause the cold. But that group has enough internal similarities that a single approach to treatment is potentially doable."
Rotbart, who is a consultant to drug developer ViroPharma, says the medication starts making patients feel better within 24 hours and makes the cold disappear a day sooner.
"If you've got a miserable cold, you're missing work and the kids are missing school, and you've got a medication that is non-sedating and attacks the root of the infection, that is significant," he says.
Final clinical data will be presented today at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy by Frederick Hayden of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
Preliminary results in the study, which involved 2,096 patients, found that those whose colds were caused by picornaviruses recovered in 6.3 days if they took pleconaril three times a day for five days. The cold dragged on for 7.3 days for those who got a placebo.
Rotbart says 65% of those in the study had colds caused by picornaviruses, but the drug, now under review by the Food and Drug Administration, won't help the remaining 35% infected with other cold viruses.
There is a need for an alternative to over-the-counter cold remedies, which can affect the ability to think and perform daily activities more than people realize, says neuropsychologist Gary Kay of Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C.
Kay says the average adult endures two to four colds a year, and, in a survey of 1,000 people, 30% report having missed a day of school or work because of a cold.
Three-fourths report treating colds with non-prescription antihistamines or decongestants, and most say they feel no side effects, he says.
"But if we measure their ability to perform, we find impaired performance in absence of feeling drowsy or sleepy," Kay says. "That's the danger. If you don't feel drowsy, you are not going to take precautions."
How welcome a new anti-viral cold medication will be to the average cold sufferer remains to be seen, says family physician Daniel Van Durme of Tampa.
"The symptoms of cold are caused by the body's immune response to the virus," he says. An anti-viral medication "will slow it a little, but this is not the elusive cure for the common cold."
What will be more important, he says, is if it reduces the spread of colds, which can cause serious illness in nursing homes and other vulnerable populations.
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