The common cold and why old people insist you wear extra layers in bad weather
By Tina - October 14, 2015
The body reacts and acclimates to the cold in a number of ways. Our bodies shiver and our teeth chatter. Goosebumps form. All this is done by the little almond in our brains (the hypothalamus- responsible for thermoregulation) to make sure that we keep warm when the weather outside is frightful. Now as the temperature outside gets cooler, the old people in your family are probably telling you to bundle up as a preemptive measure against "getting sick" because of the chilly weather outside.
Well is it true?
The idea that the temperature can make a person more susceptible to getting a cold has always been regarded as an old wives' tale that isn't true and is just told to scare the children. What happens instead of the cold giving you a cold is that people generally stay indoors when the weather outside is bad. They stay inside with recycled air and cough on each other. It's a people behavior thing.
So it's not true?
But actually being lazy and staying inside (and coughing on everybody) might not be the only reason why people get colds more often during chilly weather time. Rhinovirus (aka RV, the germs that cause the common cold) strains replicate way better in colder temperatures. Why?
Researchers at Yale first started out by modifying a strain of the rhinovirus to infect mice ('cause the people rhinovirus doesn't infect rodents). Then they used these strains to infect airway epithelial cells of mice and compared the transcriptional response of the cells at 33 and 37 degrees Celsius. Incubating the cells at a lower temperature showed that the antiviral defense response was not as strong when compared to incubation at a higher temperature. How? Well, the results indicate that during rhinovirus replication, higher temperatures reveal more RLR ligand accumulation (RIG-I-Like receptors that detect viral RNA species by triggering interferon response for antiviral response) which leads to stronger antiviral gene expression... meaning that there is a possible temperature dependence of common cold sickness and you should wear a sweater and not breathe in cold air.
IMAGE SOURCE: http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00789/flu-460_789486c.jpg, http://files.mom.me/photos/2014/12/10/6-86303-big-red-jacket-1418253983.jpg, http://files.mom.me/photos/2014/12/10/6-86300-puffy-pink-baby-1418253965.jpg
SOURCE: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/body/scientists-finally-prove-cold-weather-makes-sick/, Foxman, Ellen F., James A. Storer, Megan E. Fitzgerald, Bethany R. Wasik, Lin Hou, Hongyu Zhao, Paul E. Turner, Anna Marie Pyle, and Akiko Iwasaki. "Temperature-dependent Innate Defense against the Common Cold Virus Limits Viral Replication at Warm Temperature in Mouse Airway Cells." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 112.3 (2015): 827-32. Web., http://news.yale.edu/2015/01/05/cold-virus-replicates-better-cooler-temperatures
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