WASHINGTON: Chilly weather and common respiratory infections often go hand in hand. Reasons for this include people gather inside more in winter, and viruses survive better in low-humidity indoor air. But there has been less certainty about whether lower temperatures actually impair human immunity and, if so, how.
Now, a new study published on Tuesday in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology details a previously unknown way that the immune system attacks viral intruders inside the nose -- and finds it works better when it´s warm.
These discoveries could pave the way for an eventual treatment against the common cold and other viruses, Mansoor Amiji, a pharmaceutical sciences professor at Northeastern University, who co-led the research, told AFP.
The starting point was previous research by Amiji and colleagues in 2018, which found that nasal cells released “extracellular vesicles” (EVs) -- a spray of tiny sacs that swarmed and destroyed bacteria upon inhalation.