By: Diana Barnes-Brown for Medtech1While those in wintry regions may find the season interminable, few would deny that catching a cold – or bringing one home to the family – makes the chilly days and nights into even more of a nuisance. Fortunately, although nothing short of complete isolation can guarantee cold-free cold weather, there is now evidence that use of alcohol-based hand gels to clean the hands can help prevent colds from spreading throughout households.
| Cold-Free Precautions |
In addition to using alcohol-based hand gel, there are simple steps to take to avoid colds:
Wash your hands after:
You shake someone’s hand
You blow your nose
You change a diaper
Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth
Count to 15 when you wash your hands, and use soap
If you have a child in daycare, take extra precautions to avoid cold-contamination in your family
Do no prepare food for others if you have the stomach flu, and do not eat food prepared by someone with the stomach flu
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A recent study, published in the medical journal Pediatrics, followed 208 families through cold season, and found that the 22 percent who used alcohol-based hand sanitizers had lower rates of cold transmission between family members than those who did not. Those who used the gels also had a lower rate of transmission of “the stomach flu,” or infections of the G.I. tract, but the findings were not statistically significant, meaning that for a population of the size studied, researchers could not be certain of the variation was due to the use of the gels or to other factors.
One of the most frequent modes of cold transmission is contact with someone or something contaminated with the cold virus, then touching the mouth, nose, or eyes, where the virus can enter the body and cause illness. Intestinal and stomach viruses can be transmitted when an infected person touches food that someone else eats, or when changing the diaper of a sick child.
Since what all of these situations have in common is that the virus is transmitted by touch, good hand cleansing habits can do wonders for preventing transmission of colds, even in a family, where people are in close proximity to one another and interact frequently. Children in day care often bring home viruses from other children, because they are too young to understand virus prevention methods, so often parents must work to prevent one child from infecting the entire family with a nasty illness.
But traditional soap and water cleansing is not always an option. The convenience of alcohol-based hand gels is that they require no water and kill off viruses and bacteria in only a few seconds, noted lead study author Grace M. Lee M.D. of Harvard Medical School.
Lee was careful to note that the findings do not offer conclusive proof that the hand gels themselves were the key to preventing colds in the families who used them, because the hand gel use could have signified that these families were already more aware of the need practice better “hand hygiene” than others.
“Close attention to hand hygiene is important for preventing the spread of colds and stomach flu in the home,” she noted, and “alcohol-based hand gels can be a part of that.”
Alcohol-based hand gels are already used in many hospitals and nursing homes, due to evidence that caregivers who use them tend to carry fewer infectious microbes on their hands.
Another interesting finding of the study was that few people were clear on just what steps were necessary to prevent the transmission of colds and gastrointestinal infections. Most respondents said that kissing a sick person is a good way to get a cold, when in fact this is not an efficient way to pass on the virus. Only two-thirds knew that shaking hands with an infected person was a good way to catch their bug. And, most surprisingly, Lee and her research team found that only a handful of respondents knew that they were at risk for picking up stomach flu from diaper changes or eating food prepared by an infected person.
As for hand hygiene practices, 30 percent answered that, at least some of the time, they use only water when washing their hands, while experts recommend at least 15 seconds of scrubbing with soap and water to rid the skin of potentially transmittable viruses and bacteria. Also, most respondents were in the habit of cleaning their hands after changing a diaper or using the bathroom, but only a third always did so after blowing their noses.
Lee and her research team advocate better education for parents and families when it comes to preventing contaminated hands, and their potential for making colds a family affair.
