Snot-nosed kids make colds worse
Exposure to school-age kids raises the odds that a person with lung disease who catches a cold will suffer symptoms like a runny nose, sore throat, and cough.
The study’s results come as a surprise, says Ann Falsey, professor of medicine at the University of Rochester and an infectious disease expert at Rochester General Hospital.
“Before we conducted this study, I would have expected other factors, perhaps the severity of underlying disease—the state of the patient’s general health—to indicate who would actually suffer symptoms from their colds,” she says.
“Instead, contact with school-age children is the only risk factor we found, and it increases both the risk of infection and also the risk of suffering symptoms once you’ve caught a cold.”
Full story at Futurity.
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