CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., Sept. 29 -- A group of researchers led by a team from the University of Virginia Health System found that adults infected with rhinovirus, the cause of half of all colds, may contaminate many objects used in daily life, leaving an infectious gift for others who follow them. The results of their experiments, conducted in hotel rooms, will be shared at the 46th annual Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, in San Francisco, Calif. on Friday, Sept. 29.
Most are aware that handshaking and other forms of skin to skin contact can result in catching someone else's cold, but many may assume that viruses can't live long on hard surfaces in living environments. Dr. Owen Hendley, professor of pediatrics in the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the UVa Health System who will present the research, cautions that this assumption may not be completely true.
"To my surprise, in a hotel room occupied overnight by an adult with a cold, everything from television remote controls, telephones, light switches and faucets were contaminated with rhinovirus," said Hendley.
To begin the study, people with colds were recruited to spend 5 hours awake in hotel rooms before going to bed and 2 awake hours in their rooms the next morning. The volunteers had no visitors and were asked to wash their hands only after using the bathroom. At the time of check out, participants were asked to identify objects they had touched. After they left, ten of the touched objects in the subject's room were tested for the presence of rhinovirus. Thirty five percent of the objects had residual virus, demonstrating that people with colds do not have to be present for their germs to linger.
In order to infect an individual, germs must reach the eyes or the nose, usually by way of a person's own fingers. So researchers then set out to learn if germs lingering in the environment can make the leap from surfaces to fi
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Contact: Abena Foreman-Trice
abena@virginia.edu
434-243-2734
University of Virginia Health System
29-Sep-2006