Say someone offered you up to $950 to stay in a hotel room for five days complete with cable television and room service -- the only catch is that you might get a little sick. No this is not a joke. It is a cold study.
Over the years, hundreds of University students have given up their holidays in order to take advantage of this opportunity to earn some quick cold cash.
Dr. Frederick Hayden, who has conducted numerous cold studies at the University, said there is a long history of research for the common cold at the University.
"One of the reasons I joined the faculty over 25 years ago was because there was an expert here that I wanted to work with, Dr. Jack Gwaltney," Hayden said. "We're one of the few places in the world that does this kind of work."
First-year College student Victoria Kline participated in a hotel cold study over Spring Break, which Hayden conducted in order to research the effects of Clarinol on the common cold.
"I didn't get sick so it was really relaxing in the hotel," Kline said. "And it only lasted half of Spring Break."
Clarinol, also known as Safflorin, is a dietary supplement that can be bought locally at Rebecca's health food store. Hayden is studying Clarinol to see if its anti-flammatory effects will reduce the length or severity of the common cold.
Ron Turner is another doctor who conducts cold studies in the University and Charlottesville communities. He did his residency at the University a quarter century ago and returned to continue his research on homeopathic drugs that treat the common cold three years ago.
"[Cold treatment] has really gone in the direction of dietary supplements and botanicals," Turner said. "My suspicion is that these things don't work, and good quality studies need to be done to see if [homeopathic drugs] work."
Three years ago, Turner received a grant from the National Institute for Health which funded his research on Echinacea. This study included 440 participants who were observed over the course of six hotel studies. Turner said the NIH grant is responsible for the high frequency of cold studies in the last few years and that the frequency of cold studies may lessen because he just finished his study.
Turner said the frequency of further studies depends upon funding. His NIH study was the only study at the University not funded by the drug industry.
Many students don't care what the doctors are studying, as long as they get paid and the cold studies keep on coming. Kline said having to travel to the off-Grounds research facility for her weekly checkup was the worst aspect of the cold study, but the studies that require students to travel off-Grounds do pay more.
Fourth-year Engineering student Justin Landrum didn't just say he would do a cold study again -- he currently is participating in another study, an outpatient cold study for Proctor & Gamble.
Turner said the Proctor & Gamble cold study is not testing any medicine. Instead, researchers are trying to study the genomics of colds by learning about the mechanisms that cause the disease. According to Turner, researchers scrape the nasal passages of participants on a regular basis in order to study how the cells are reacting to the rhinovirus. In this particular outpatient cold study, participants only have a 50 percent chance of getting the cold while in other studies the chances are usually 100 percent. Since this study does not require a hotel stay, it only paid $350.
While Landrum said the worst part about participating in the cold study was having to fast before blood draws, Landrum said the best part was working with the "lovely ladies," or nurses. "Oh, and I get a check too which is nice," he said.
Many students enjoy working with the welcoming nursing and research staff.
Nurse Annie Tromey has been working with the Respiratory Disease Study Unit for the last seven years helping to conduct various studies. She said she enjoys working at the center because they do everything from pediatric studies to geriatric studies and everything in between.
"It's a nice variety of ages and I really like getting to know the people," Tromey said.
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