Volunteers show vaccine can prevent colds — The common cold can be prevented, a British scientist reported to the sixth annual Symposium on Antibiotics meeting in Washington, D.C. Weekly injections of a vaccine prepared from the volunteer’s own nose and throat bacteria significantly reduced the number of colds, Dr. J. Morrison Ritchie, director of the Public Health Laboratory, Birkenhead, England, reported. The number of colds in those not receiving the vaccine was five times that in the vaccinated. Further tests, in which volunteers were given antibiotic tablets of lozenges in order to prevent colds, met with similar success. Only four in 100 of those receiving the antibiotic developed all the manifestations of the complicated cold, Dr. Ritchie said.
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