How Cold Weather May Help You Catch a Cold

Warm nasal cells mount stronger defenses against cold-causing coronaviruses and rhinoviruses than those exposed to cooler temperatures, an in vitro experiment finds.

Written byDan Robitzski

| 3 min read

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A woman wearing a gray sweater and a bright orange scarf and hat blows her nose vaguely in the direction of the camera. A snowy landscape can be seen behind her.

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People have long associated being cold with getting sick. With the advent of germ theory, doctors and scientists began to suspect that it wasn’t the temperature itself making people fall ill, but rather that something about harsher conditions weakened the immune system, allowing viruses people are exposed to—such as those behind the common cold, the flu, or COVID-19—to take hold more easily. However, the precise reasons that chilly temperatures increase infection susceptibility has remained elusive, so seasonality is usually explained by changing human behavior patterns—especially a tendency to crowd together indoors to escape colder weather.

Now, research published today (December 6) in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology offers up a mechanism that could explain how being cold influences catching a cold: Nasal cell defenses are weaker when the cells are cold. “Conventionally, it was thought that cold and flu season occurred in cooler months because people are stuck ...

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Meet the Author

Dan Robitzski
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Dan is an award-winning journalist based in Los Angeles who joined The Scientist as a reporter and editor in 2021. Ironically, Dan’s undergraduate degree and brief career in neuroscience inspired him to write about research rather than conduct it, culminating in him earning a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University in 2017. In 2018, an Undark feature Dan and colleagues began at NYU on a questionable drug approval decision at the FDA won first place in the student category of the Association of Health Care Journalists' Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism. Now, Dan writes and edits stories on all aspects of the life sciences for the online news desk, and he oversees the “The Literature” and “Modus Operandi” sections of the monthly TS Digest and quarterly print magazine. Read more of his work at danrobitzski.com.
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