Touch a light switch, catch a cold, study finds

WASHINGTON, Sept 30 (Reuters) Someone with a cold may just have left a little drop of virus on the light switch for you to pick up and infect yourself with, researchers found in a real-life look at how colds get passed around.

Adults with runny noses leave the virus on about 35 per cent of objects they touch, such as telephones, door handles and television controls, the researchers at the University of Virginia reported yesterday.

An hour after someone leaves a virus-infected droplet on a surface, it can be picked up 60 per cent of the time. And 24 hours later, 33 per cent of the little virus-laden droplets got onto a finger, the researchers told a meeting of the American Society of Microbiology.

''Some adults left a few ... and some contaminated almost all of the sites tested,'' said Dr. Owen Hendley, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Virginia Health System, who led the study.

Although the study was funded by the makers of a disinfectant spray, Hendley said it is far more important for people to remember to wash their hands.

''In order to get infected with the rhinovirus which causes essentially half of the colds in adults and children, you have to get the virus on your fingertip and then you stick in your own nose and your own eye,'' Hendley said in a telephone interview.

His team wanted to study just how often this actually happens. So they put an advertisement in the Charlottesville, Virginia newspaper seeking people with colds.

They found 15 who were infected with rhinoviruses and asked them to spend the night in hotel rooms.

The volunteers were asked to move around the room, sleep there, and get up and spend two hours in the room before checking out. The researchers then asked them to point to several places they had touched.

''Of the 150 sites that they pointed out to us, 52 had virus on them, which is 35 percent,'' Hendley said.

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