Advertising their new drug as having twice the effectiveness of traditional cold medicines, University researchers are well on their way to providing more effective treatment for the widespread winter ailment.
Though the medication currently is in its testing phase, researchers have found that the drug, Covam, kills the common cold virus as well as reduces its symptoms at a faster rate than typical over the counter treatments.
The researchers conducted a double-blind trial study of 150 participants, in which the researchers did not know which participants received the new drug and which received placebos. They found that those treated with Covam showed a dramatic reduction in the severity of their cold symptoms. Treated symptoms included runny nose, sneezing, nasal mucus and sore throat.
Researchers observed improvements from 33 percent to 80 percent, according to head researcher Jack Gwaltney, University professor of internal medicine.
"This is the first antiviral treatment shown to have been effective," Gwaltney said. "It's certainly more effective than what's available right now."
Gwaltney cites the drug's success with taking a double-pronged, combination approach to treatment, administering nasal spray to kill the virus and an oral medication to effectively stop the virus from triggering the body's inflammatory mediums, which ultimately produce symptoms.
"The combination approach is nifty because you kill the virus, the ongoing problem, but you also take the symptomatic treatment for a short time to feel better," said Birgit Winther, University assistant professor of otolaryngology and a co-investigator of the study.
Traditional over the counter medicines typically fail to treat the virus itself, aiming to just ease the cold's symptoms. As OTC remedies don't effectively kill the virus, common colds can spread to other regions of the body, resulting in asthma attacks as well as ear and nasal infections, Winther said
Though Gwaltney's team continues to run trials to gauge Covam's effectiveness on hundreds of strains of the common cold, preliminary results demonstrate that the drug works on the vast majority of strains.
Meanwhile, the project is halfway through the Food and Drug Administration's approval process, and Gwaltney said he hopes to bring Covam on the market within the next five years.
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