Common waterfall

1995/11/01 Furundarena Salsamendi, Jose Ramon Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Osasuna

Another fact to take into account is that in the Spanish State, 19,000 cases per 100,000 inhabitants per year.

Symptoms of the disease usually last between 7 and 13 days. No wonder, therefore, that among medical professionals and people the concern and interest generated by this disease is so great.

Common cold can be caused by multiple viruses. Among them is rhinobirus, which generates about half of the ordinary catarros, coranobirus, parainfluence virus, respiratory syncytial virus, adenobirus and influenza virus. In addition, each of these viruses can have many appearances or serotypes. Most prevention and treatment efforts are more effective than rhinovirus.

The use of the specific vaccine for prevention has had many difficulties. One of the barriers is the existence of many types of rhinovirus that can cause common cataract. On the other hand, access to protection against one type of virus does not guarantee defense against others, but also develops mechanisms for viruses to maintain themselves, generating new types of viruses. Therefore, it is currently considered impossible to achieve comprehensive prevention against the common cataract by vaccination.

In the beginning, the preventive use of interferon alpha-2b applied in the nose aroused a great interest, but due to poor results and secondary consequences, today has been left out of research avenues.

The absence of preventive measures against such frequent infection has led us to promote therapeutic measures and/or treatments. The main routes are two: virus specific antivirus and medicines against the most important symptoms of the disease.

The administration of nasal spray enviroxime has been effective against rhinovirus in laboratory sessions, but when tested with patients, it has not shown this efficacy compared to placebos (i.e., apparent medications). Pirodabir is a substance that has been used in the laboratory against granulocnabirus and, despite the good results obtained, it remains to be seen if it will be effective in real trials. Moreover, the results obtained with zinc gluconate have not been revealing and vitamin C has failed to reduce symptoms. Therefore, these two drugs are not currently recommended.

Common cold symptoms usually last between 7 and 13 days. No wonder, therefore, that among medical professionals and people the concern and interest generated by this disease is so great.

I. Nogeras

Therefore, we only have an anti-symptomatic treatment against the disease, using antihistamines, antitusigens and anti-nasal congestion drugs. For boys and girls under the age of 12, they do not seem to be very effective, but more studies will be needed to make this statement good.

Nasal symptoms of adolescents and adults may evolve by exclusively or jointly using chlorpheniramine maleate, phenylpropanolamine hydrochloride, ipratropium bromide, pseudoephedrine hydrochloride, oxymetazoline hydrochloride, and atropine derivatives or combination of antihistamines and anti-nasal congestion. Treatment lasts 4-5 days in most cases and may cause side effects. It is recommended to take it verbally, since if ingested by the nose it can produce rebound, that is, symptoms at the time of leaving the drug may appear more clearly than at first.

Another treatment that has given rise to hope is the use of hot humid air in the laboratory as soon as symptoms appeared and the inactivation of rhinobirus at an hour of temperature of 43º C. However, it has also been confirmed that this treatment has failed.

For all of the above, we can say that treatment against common cataract is not fixed. In addition, published studies on this topic have only helped to darken more. No wonder there are many different treatments. Some practices that should be considered worrying have also been detected: avoiding physical examination of patients or the propensity to use antibiotics too often. In fact, it is to be demonstrated that bacterial complications in the treatment of viral infections of the upper respiratory tract decrease and that, in addition, they produce changes in the most common nasopharyngeal microbes facilitating the entry of stronger microbes.

The use of anti-infectious drugs is very wide and compared to the habits of others we can say that it is excessive: After the United Kingdom, the Spanish state is the territory that consumes the most anti-infection drugs. One of the consequences of this practice is the resistance shown by some microbes that cause bacterial infections that are spread outside hospitals, such as pneumococcus and haemophilus influenzae.

Undoubtedly, the participation of the Health Authorities is necessary to achieve a rational use of antimicrobials through the proper training of physicians involved in the basic assistance and dissemination of specific protocols. In fact, research has not brought clarity and pharmaceutical companies exert enormous informative pressure to increase antimicrobial consumption. Without this participation it is difficult to progress in improving the quality of care against the disease.