Researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore and the University of Wisconsin-Madison are one step closer to finding effective treatments for the common cold, as they succeeded to crack the cold’s code by sequencing the genomes of all 99 known strains of rhinovirus. The rhinovirus is also known as the common cold.

“We are now quite certain that we see the Achilles’ heel, and that a very effective treatment for the common cold is at hand,” Stephen B. Liggett, an asthma expert at the University of Maryland and co-author of the study, said.

The rhinovirus causes people to get sick four to ten times a year with symptoms that include sore throat, runny nose, nasal congestion, sneezing and coughing. Sometimes people may also suffer muscle aches, headaches, fatigue and muscle weakness. The rhinovirus is to blame for 80 percent of childhood asthma attacks. Also, it results in between $60 and $100 billion loss including medical care, wrongly-prescribed antibiotics and missed work days.

The study has shown that rhinoviruses are even more complicated than researchers originally thought. In fact, the genetic blueprints showed that you can catch two separate strains of cold at the same time; and those strains then can swap their genetic material inside your body to make a whole new strain. That’s why finding a single drug to fight common cold may not help.

“We may end up having four or five drugs,” Liggett said.

“We know a lot about the common cold virus,” said study co-author Ann Palmenberg of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “but we didn't know how their genomes encoded all that information. Now we do, and all kinds of new things are falling out.”

The study is detailed in the February 13 issue of the journal Science.