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  3. Getting a cold or catching the flu is a common complaint for people every year. In fact, people usually catch between two and fi

Getting a cold or catching the flu is a common complaint for people every year. In fact, people usually catch between two and fi

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问题     Getting a cold or catching the flu is a common complaint for people every year. In fact, people usually catch between two and five colds a year. No one enjoys the accompanying symptoms : the sore throat, runny nose, constant sneezing and headaches. Not surprisingly, cold medications have become a big business. People spend billions of dollars to combat this recurring problem. We see the number and variety of over-the-counter medicines each lime we enter a pharmacy. People estimate that, if you combine consume," purchases and drains on health care systems, at least 40 billion dollars are spent each year in the US alone. Is a cure for the common cold possible? The answer seems to be both yes and no.

    First of all, the "common" cold itself is not a single disease. Any of two hundred different viruses could be responsible for the symptoms of a cold. Developing a vaccine for the common cold would literally mean having to develop hundreds of vaccines. Additionally, some cold viruses have the ability to change their molecular composition. Thus, even though our bodies may become immune to a certain cold virus this winter, by next winter our antibodies will probably not recognize it. However, one family of viruses, the rhinoviruses, seems to account for almost 40% of all colds. Therefore, scientists have been focusing their research on this family of viruses in the hopes that, treatments targeting rhinoviruses will result in a drastic decrease in the number of colds people get. In the late 1990s searchers experienced some initial success. Biologists developed a treatment, an anti-viral molecule called BIRR4, which prevented the binding of the virus to cells in the nose. This binding is an essential first step in stopping a viral infection and, was it preventable, many infections would be by-passed. For the next few years, the pharmaceutical giant Boehringer tried to make this treatment commercially viable. Unfortunately, they found to their dismay that this treatment only worked just prior to getting a cold or in the first stages of infection, when most people do not yet realize any thing is wrong. As a possible treatment for a cold, it was severely limited and so in 2000. Boehringer dropped the BIRR4 project.
    Another difficulty in finding a cure for the common cold is that the cold virus does not actually cause our cold symptoms. Indeed, by the time we start to show cold symptoms, the viral infection is almost over. Most infections result in no symptoms at all. The symptoms that we get from a cold are, in reality, produced by our body’ s immune response, not by the virus itself. One way the body fights infection is with an anti-inflammatory response. Part of this response is to dilate blood vessels in the affected area and to make the affected cells release fluid to the surrounding area. In cold, this results in the swelling of the nose and throat, as well as sneezing and a runny nose. This also very similar to how the body reacts when we have allergies. Thus, some scientists are now suggesting targeting the body’s immune responses rather than the virus itself, as we do when we treat allergies. One medical researcher suggests that in order to find a cure for colds we must weaken our immune system’s response. Through a cocktail of certain drugs—interferon, ibuprofen and chlorpheniramine—cold sufferers would be able to decrease the anti-inflammatory part of the immune response and get rid of their symptoms, while still allowing their bodies to fight off the remaining viral infection. Ibuprofen and chlorpheniramine are both inexpensive and available over the counter. Unfortunately, however, a single dose of interferon is about $200 and is as yet unavailable in large over-the-counter quantities.
    Though at times it has seemed that a cure was tantalizingly close, this process of infection and our bodies’ response to it is clearly more complicated than previously guessed. Undoubtedly, the search tor a cure for the common cold will continue. What form this eventual cure will take though, is anyone’ s guess.
What is the actual cause of cold symptoms?
选项 A、The cold virus.
B、The body’s immune response.
C、Mixed use of certain drugs.
D、Delayed treatment.
答案B
解析 参见67题答案解析。
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本试题收录于： A类竞赛（研究生）题库大学生英语竞赛（NECCS）分类
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