Mad about Science: Rhinovirus

By Brenden Bobby
Reader Columnist

Two months into the school year and a biting chill falls upon the land. Overnight, everyone is coughing, hacking and oozing all manner of vile ichors — the tide of sickness cannot be stopped; and, try as you might to avoid it, eventually it will consume you too.

That’s what happened to me, anyway.

Two days into a mind-numbing sickness-induced stupor, one begins to ponder the origins of this dreaded illness. Why do we always get sick this time of year? What is it that makes us sick? Is running around outside with a wet head really how you’ll catch a cold?

The common cold is a broad term for respiratory illness caused by viral infection. Most frequently, this is caused by a rhinovirus infection. I know what you’re thinking, and no, this has nothing to do with the rhinoceros. Rhinovirus is a mash-up of Greek and Latin, essentially meaning “virus of the nose,” as this is its primary infection vector and where the bulk of symptoms occur.

In some ways, the common cold is caused by an infection and spread of the rhinovirus within your respiratory system, but the bulk of the damage occurring is actually from the response of your own body. The human immune system takes a scorched earth approach to most viral infections, destroying everything within reach to curtail the spread of the threat. 

This is probably good, as you don’t want unrestricted viral reproduction occurring throughout your body, but it’s also unfortunate because all of the swelling that causes the mucus, the coughing, the headaches and sore throat is your body’s equivalent of firebombing a city to neutralize a petty thief who stole a loaf of bread.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re all well aware of how viral agents spread. They hitch a ride on respiratory droplets and stick to things those droplets impact. Our respiratory system is a humid place and most viruses are extremely small, ranging from 30 to 120 nanometers. These tiny viruses use microscopic droplets of water to travel from one infection point to another. Sometimes this is effective, and sometimes it requires a lot of luck to end up in a new host.

It’s difficult to accurately imagine how many viruses we spread with every breath because we can’t see the air we’re breathing. The droplets are too small to be seen, and our brains are really bad at picturing things we can’t see.

Imagine the viruses are the soldiers in the beginning of Saving Private Ryan, about to storm the beaches of Normandy. In this case, many soldiers are packed into a little transport vehicle that’s being moved from England to the beaches of Normandy. The military threw tons of these crafts at the beach in multiple places to maximize the effectiveness of the invasion, to establish a toehold and push into France at large.

This is the exact same thing viruses do, but instead of France, they’re trying to find other humans by being flung out in every direction, grappling onto any object they can, and hoping that another human’s hands sweep across that surface and deliver them to another face.

Human beings really enjoy touching their faces. There are many nerve endings in our faces; they’re the center of our social interaction with other humans; and we’re perpetually checking them for things like food debris in our teeth, dried mucus in our nostrils, hair or water in our eyes, and more.

Rhinovirus is an exceptionally fast-mover and highly efficient virus. We learned that COVID-19, a coronavirus, could incubate in the body for up to two weeks after infection before the host begins to show symptoms. Rhinovirus begins attacking receptors in our upper respiratory tract immediately and a full-blown infection can begin as rapidly as two days after initial infection.

The quick-moving nature of rhinoviruses is one of the reasons no effective cure or vaccine has been developed for them. They move very rapidly, spread and replicate astoundingly fast and mutate just as quickly, leaving few opportunities for artificial vaccines or cures to remain relevant for long. This is likely why our body takes such an aggressive approach to dealing with the virus. Additionally, there are more than 150 varieties of rhinovirus present at all times. Pair this with the relatively non-lethal nature of the virus and there isn’t a tremendous reason to pursue a cure. It’s a seasonal, sometimes monthly annoyance, while a potential cure could carry insane side effects that wouldn’t outweigh the benefit of not being sick for a couple of days.

That being said, it’s not an entirely riskless disease to contract. Infections can be serious for the elderly or immunocompromised. Infections that develop into pneumonia can become a chronic problem or even a terminal one for those who don’t have the natural immunity to deal with the infection.

We learned about rhinoviruses in 1953, when Winston Price of Johns Hopkins University isolated and observed samples of the virus from nurses. It’s likely these viruses have been around for as long as humans have existed, but we never had a name for them until 1956, when Price’s studies were published.

It’s evident that globalization has been a tremendous boon to virtually all pathogens. In ages past, when travel between places would take days or weeks, the opportunity for viruses to effectively propagate was reduced. Now, we can circumnavigate the globe in fewer than 48 hours and regularly interact with goods shipped from across the world within a timeframe that could allow persistent pathogens to survive long enough to infect us. 

Rather than fret about it, I think I’ll just take some vitamins and hope for the best.

Stay curious, 7B.