00:00 Commuters
walking in street
Cold
sufferers coughing
Guide Voice: The densely populated cities of
our modern world provide ideal breeding grounds for viruses - and
ideal conditions in which they can spread. At a time when much is
made of the potential dangers of biological weapons its easy to
lose sight of a very common virus - one that affects all of us
every year; the Common Cold. Common cold viruses are so widespread
that few of us escape infection.
00:29 SOT: Professor Ronald Eccles
Bsc PhD Dsc Director, Common Cold Centre, Cardiff University
- "Common cold does have a great economic impact
on any country. Many, many millions of days are lost in every
country - loss from work, loss from school, low productivity. Even
if you get into work you may not be able to work as efficiently. So
it does lower our productivity dramatically".
00:48 GVs
Exteriors Cardiff University
Common
Cold Centre signage
Interior
Common Cold Centre
Researchers
and testing
Guide Voice: At the Common
Cold Centre at Cardiff University, researchers are concerned with
controlling the symptoms that are the real cause of the problems
associated with the Common Cold - such as runny noses, blocked
airways and coughing.
01:11(SOT) Prof. R Eccles partially
overlaid with shots of students and testing centre -
"We're fortunate in Cardiff that we have around fifteen
thousand students very close to the Centre. Students are very good
(Prof into vision 01;20) as "guinea pigs", in apostrophe,
for common cold studies. They suffer perhaps four or five colds a
year. They're often severe colds. That's because we get more colds
when we're younger as opposed to older and if we are stressed or on
a poor diet the colds tend to be more severe; And students are
usually stressed and they're often on a poor diet because of
financial reasons. So they make a good population for us to
study".
01:40 Researchers
and testing
Guide Voice: The
staff at the Common Cold Centre are involved in clinical trials for
the pharmaceutical industry on new medications to treat the common
cold, influenza and hay fever. Each year the Centre enters over one
thousand patients on clinical trials to assess the value of these
new medications.
02:04(SOT) Prof. R Eccles:
"We're looking at controlling symptoms so we can get
people back to work, back to school, back to a normal social life
et cetera and that would be the main achievement that we're aiming
for".
02:18 Poster
recruiting subjects
Details of poster
Testing volunteers
Commuters
Guide Voice:
With over two hundred different viruses
causing the symptoms of the common cold, many believe that it can
never be fully eradicated. In the meantime, Cardiff University's
Common Cold Centre is the front line in the fight to control the
symptoms of the virus and keep the UK from losing an estimated 20 -
25 million working days each year to the miseries of the Common
Cold.
02:44
Cut story ends
02:49 Additional
Material
02:59 (SOT) Prof. R Eccles
- "The problem
with common cold is that it's not a single disease. We're looking
at over two hundred different types of virus that give similar
symptoms. And therefore it's impossible to develop any specific
vaccine".
03:13 Wide
of screen and cough record
03:23 Researcher
& testee - researcher explaining tests - wide
03:44 As
above close up on researcher
04:11 VNR
ends
