BREAKING NEWS: Paediatricians don’t catch colds. So scientists decided to investigate their blood—and found a “treasure trove” of 56 antibodies, it was revealed today.
These will be developed to create treatments to help everyone fight respiratory diseases, including severe ones that can kill small children and older people.
Hui Zhai and his team at the Children’s Hospital of Chongqing Medical University approached 10 paediatricians who had been working at the hospital for ten years or more—and asked for blood samples.
The story of what they found is told in a paper printed in Science Translational Medicine, a US academic journal, this week, and published in the press today.
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THOUSANDS OF DEATHS
The blood samples were examined for immunity from diseases such as respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a very common source of cold-like symptoms—and the cause of tens of thousands of deaths every year.
They discovered the child-doctors’ blood contained 56 potent antibodies. “The researchers then generated artificial versions of these antibodies and tested them in the lab, finding that three were particularly active against a diverse range of RSV strains,” said New Scientist magazine, in a report on the discovery today.
“One of the three also neutralised human metapneumovirus, which belongs to the same virus family as RSV and is a common cause of colds, but can also lead to severe illness in some children.”
The antibodies taken from the blood of paediatricians were “up to 25 times better at blocking RSV than existing antibodies called nirsevimab and clesrovimab, and they neutralised a wider range of strains,” the report said.
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POWERFUL NEW TOOL
While there is no claim that the discovery can cure the common cold, it is clear that it provides powerful new tools for fighting serious respiratory diseases.
An Australian doctor, Trent Calcutt, told the magazine that the folklore seemed to be true. “I’ve been working with paediatric patients for 10 years now and in my first few years, I would probably get two to three notable respiratory illnesses per year, and now I can go a year without getting any.”
[A link to the relevant academic paper is provided here.]