ABSTRACT
The common cold is one of relatively few human illnesses that can be artificially induced in volunteers for research purposes. A human model for studying human disease has the obvious advantage of creating disease in the species of interest, the human. Thus, scientific observations made with the human model require no extrapolations across species with their attendant dangers from differences in anatomy, physiology, and molecular biology. Using the human model, a considerable body of important information about colds has been obtained in this century. Much of the work has focused on rhinovirus, the most important common cold virus. Rhinovirus challenge in humans was initially used to confirm the pathogenicity of the virus and subsequently has been employed to investigate routes of transmission, mechanisms of pathogenesis, and responses to traditional and experimental treatments.
