Common-cold Sense
You can't beat it, but you don't have to join it. Maybe it got the name “common cold” because it's more common in winter. The fact is, though, being cold doesn't have anything to do with getting one. Colds are caused by the spread of rhinoviruses, and, at least so far, medical science is better at telling you how to avoid getting one than how to get rid of one.
Children are the most common way cold viruses are spread to adults, because they have more colds than adults—an average of about eight per year. Why do kids seem so much more easily to get colds than their parents? Simple. They haven't had the opportunity to become immune to many cold viruses.
There are more than 150 different cold viruses, and you never have the same one twice. Being infected by one makes you immune to it—but only it.
Colds are usually spread by direct contact, not sneezing or coughing. From another person's hand to your hand and then to your nose or eyes is the most common route. The highest concentration of cold viruses anywhere is found under the thumbnails of a boy, although the viruses can survive for hours on skin or other smooth surfaces.
Hygiene is your best defense. Wash your hands frequently, preferably with a disinfectant soap, especially when children in your household have colds.
But even careful hygiene won't ward off every cold. So, what works when a coughing, sneezing, runny nose strikes?
The old prescription of two aspirins, lots of water, and bed rest is a good place to start. But you'll also find some of the folk remedies worth trying. Hot mixtures of sugar（or honey）, lemon, and water have real benefits.
1. According to the essay, you may have a cold because
A. it is caused by the cold winter weather.
B. the spread of rhinoviruses gets people infected.
C. because another person's coughing passes the cold to you.
D. because you wash your hands too often.
2. The best way to keep yourself from getting colds is
A. to keep yourself clean.
B. to use a disinfectant soap.
C. to take two aspirin pills every day.
D. to drink lots of water.
3. Children have more colds because
A. they are usually infected about eight times each year.
B. they are not immune to many cold viruses.
C. they never wash their hands so that their thumbnails are dirty.
D. they don't like eating lemon.
4. When you are having a cold,
A. it is always the same kind of cold that you had last time.
B. it may be the same kind of cold that you had last time.
C. it is certainly not the same kind of cold that you had last time.
D. it is probably not the same kind of cold that you had last time.
5. When one is having a cold, he often has some symptoms EXCEPT
A. coughing.
B. having a sore throat.
C. having a runny nose.
D. having a stomachache.
Drug Reactions—A Major Cause of Death
Adverse drug reactions may cause the deaths of over 100, 000 US hospital patients each year, making them a leading cause of death nationwide, according to a report in the Journal of the America Medical Association.
“The incidence of serious and fatal adverse drug reactions（ADRs）in US hospitals was found to be extremely high,” say researchers at the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada.
They carried on an analysis of 39 ADR-related studies at US hospitals over the past 30 years and defined an ADR as “any harmful, unintended, and undesired effect of a drug which occurs at doses used in humans for prevention, diagnosis, or therapy. ”
An average 6.7% of all hospitalized patients experience an ADR every year, according to the researchers. They estimate that “in 1994, overall 2, 216, 000 hospitalized patients had serious ADRs, and 106, 000 had fatal ADRs.” This means that ADRs may rank as the fourth single largest cause of death in America.
And these incidence figures are probably conservative, the researchers add, since their ADR, definition did not include outcomes linked to problems in drug administration, overdoses, drug abuse, and therapeutic failures.
The control of ADRs also means spending more money. One US study estimated the overall cost of treating ADRs at up to $4 billion per year.
Dr. David Bates of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, believes that healthcare workers need to pay more attention to the problem, especially since many ADRs are easily preventable. “When a patient develops and allergy or sensitivity, it is often not recorded,” Bates notes, “and patients receive drugs to which they have known allergies or sensitivities with disturbing frequency.” He believes computerized surveillance systems—still works-in-progress at many of the nation's hospitals—should help cut down the frequency of these types of errors.