Who Knew?

Wisconsin Week’s Josh Orton finds answers to questions of campus interest posed by faculty and staff. We can’t promise to answer all questions submitted, but we’ll try to pick those most likely to be of interest to the largest number of readers. Send queries to wisweek@news.wisc.edu.

Q: I read about a UW common cold study in the New Yorker a few weeks ago. Who conducted that? Does the UW still do common cold research?

A: The story in the March 11 New Yorker featured a UW study designed by Elliot Dick and colleagues to help illustrate some of the transmission mysteries about the common cold that still trouble researchers.

Back in 1984, Dick put healthy and cold-infected subjects together in a room, and had them play poker from 8 a.m.-11 p.m. Researchers were testing the hypothesis that all cold transmission comes through contact with the hands or what they touched, and then from the hands to the eyes, mouth, etc. So researchers allowed only half of the healthy subjects to touch their eyes and mouths to see whether it would prevent transmission. Orthopedic braces and other such devices were used to prevent the subjects from accidentally scratching their noses or rubbing their eyes, and their hands were gloved and disinfected for bathroom trips.

Unfortunately, this venture into diseased gambling produced mixed results: About the same number of restrained, healthy card-sharks developed colds as the un-restrained. Researchers praised Dick for his strategy, though.

Since Dick’s study, common-cold research has moved away from aspects of transmission. Four years ago, Bruce Barrett from Family Medicine wanted to conduct experiments on how Echinacea treated cold symptoms, but he found that there was no validated instrument to measure symptom severity or quality of life. When testing treatments, says Barrett, researchers in the past were criticized for measuring results with outcomes that didn’t much matter. People care more if a cold treatment helps them feel or function better.

So Barrett and crew began designing and testing what is known as an “illness specific quality of life instrument.” The researchers’ result is a comprehensive questionnaire that asks cold sufferers to rate their symptoms, their ability to function and whether their condition has improved during the last 24 hours. Its name is The Wisconsin Upper Respiratory Symptom Survey, or W.U.R.S.S. The recently published research can be found in the March edition of The Journal of Family Practice. W.U.R.S.S. “is now ready for formal validity testing or practical use in common cold research,” Barrett says.