REAL LIFE NEWS: VIRUSES MORE DANGEROUS IF YOU CATCH THEM IN THE MORNING
by Hazed
If you catch a virus, it’s going to be more dangerous if you are infected in the morning, according to a new study by the University of Cambridge in the UK.
The study shows that viruses were 10 times more successful if the infection started in the morning. It also found that people whose body clock was disrupted by shift-work or jet-lag were always vulnerable to infection.
Viruses depend on hijacking the machinery inside cells in order to replicate, but the cells change dramatically during a day because of the body clock. This affects how successfully the virus infection invades the body.
The researchers infected mice with either flu or herpes. The mice who were infected in the morning had ten times the viral levels of those infected in the evening.
This has huge implications for controlling outbreaks of disease. Prof Akhilesh Reddy, one of the researchers, said, “In a pandemic, staying in during the daytime could be quite important and save people’s lives, it could have a big impact if trials bear it out.”
Well, I am not a morning person, so it sounds like I have a very good reason to stay in bed late – I am avoiding catching a virus until later in the day!
