How does chicken soup cure the common cold?
I vouch that it works on me and my wife swears by it. So did countless Jewish wives. The origin of the discovery is cloaked in mystery. Maimonides (in his "Medical responsa") recommends chicken as a remedy against the early stages of leprosy, although he does recommend rooster testicles for treating the convalescent. The chicken soup first appears in his "Treatise on Asthma" as a remedy for asthma ("Medicine in the Bible and the Talmud: selections from classical Jewish sources", F. Rosner; pp. 135) I do not think it really works for asthmatics, but there is certainly something to it as a cold remedy.
It turns out there is a "scientific" explanation: the soup is claimed to inhibit neutrophil chemotaxis. Interestingly, it must be Jewish chicken soup: no meat, no vegetables -
...The activation of common physiologic pathways likely accounts for the marked similarity of symptoms that result from colds. In this regard, colds are associated with the generation of neutrophil chemotactic activities and with the recruitment of neutrophils (white blood cells) to the epithelial surface of the airways. Since neutrophil products are potent secretagogues, this may be one mechanism by which colds commonly lead to cough and sputum from a diverse set of infections... A traditional chicken soup significantly inhibited neutrophil migration and did so in a concentration-dependent manner. The activity [towards f-Met-Leu-Phe induced chemotaxis inhibition] was present in a nonparticulate component of the chicken soup. All of the vegetables present in the soup and the chicken individually had inhibitory activity. The present study, therefore, suggests that chicken soup may contain a number of substances with beneficial medicinal activity. A mild anti-inflammatory effect could be one mechanism by which the soup could result in the mitigation of symptomatic upper respiratory tract infections.
http://chestjournal.chestpubs.org/content/118/4/1150.full.pdf+html
http://ajrccm.atsjournals.org/cgi/reprint/165/10/1351
Even if the soup interferes with fMLP-stimulated chemotaxis of white blood cells, as they say, fMLP isn't a viral product: it is an N-formyl-Met product of bacterial peptide degradation: fMet is used by the bacteria (and our own mitochondria that are derived from these bacteria) to start peptide synthesis (the amino terminal is modified for directionality); it is not made in the cytosol of eukaryotic and archaean cells. This is what makes fMet-terminated peptide a signal of bacterial infection on which our bodies rely to coordinate the immune response. It is an interesting quirk of nature (the translation initiation codon AUG codes for methionine, so fMet is always at the end of the nascent bacterial protein). Had bacteria really wanted us dead, as we are being told, they would switch to Met-termination because this would completely undermine our immunity. But they do not. Viral proteins cannot have fMet termination, because these are made by our own cells. The only scenario I can imagine is that when we have cold, there are opportunistic bacterial infections and the anti-inflammatory action of the soup is due to these infections. Either that, or it has nothing to do with the alleged chemotaxis inhibition effect.
How does the soup work?
also http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1230870/pdf/cmaj_161_12_1532.pdf
PS: LDL receptors?
http://shkrobius.livejournal.com/297603.html?thread=2419843#t2419843
It turns out there is a "scientific" explanation: the soup is claimed to inhibit neutrophil chemotaxis. Interestingly, it must be Jewish chicken soup: no meat, no vegetables -
...The activation of common physiologic pathways likely accounts for the marked similarity of symptoms that result from colds. In this regard, colds are associated with the generation of neutrophil chemotactic activities and with the recruitment of neutrophils (white blood cells) to the epithelial surface of the airways. Since neutrophil products are potent secretagogues, this may be one mechanism by which colds commonly lead to cough and sputum from a diverse set of infections... A traditional chicken soup significantly inhibited neutrophil migration and did so in a concentration-dependent manner. The activity [towards f-Met-Leu-Phe induced chemotaxis inhibition] was present in a nonparticulate component of the chicken soup. All of the vegetables present in the soup and the chicken individually had inhibitory activity. The present study, therefore, suggests that chicken soup may contain a number of substances with beneficial medicinal activity. A mild anti-inflammatory effect could be one mechanism by which the soup could result in the mitigation of symptomatic upper respiratory tract infections.
http://chestjournal.chestpubs.org/content/118/4/1150.full.pdf+html
http://ajrccm.atsjournals.org/cgi/reprint/165/10/1351
Even if the soup interferes with fMLP-stimulated chemotaxis of white blood cells, as they say, fMLP isn't a viral product: it is an N-formyl-Met product of bacterial peptide degradation: fMet is used by the bacteria (and our own mitochondria that are derived from these bacteria) to start peptide synthesis (the amino terminal is modified for directionality); it is not made in the cytosol of eukaryotic and archaean cells. This is what makes fMet-terminated peptide a signal of bacterial infection on which our bodies rely to coordinate the immune response. It is an interesting quirk of nature (the translation initiation codon AUG codes for methionine, so fMet is always at the end of the nascent bacterial protein). Had bacteria really wanted us dead, as we are being told, they would switch to Met-termination because this would completely undermine our immunity. But they do not. Viral proteins cannot have fMet termination, because these are made by our own cells. The only scenario I can imagine is that when we have cold, there are opportunistic bacterial infections and the anti-inflammatory action of the soup is due to these infections. Either that, or it has nothing to do with the alleged chemotaxis inhibition effect.
How does the soup work?
also http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1230870/pdf/cmaj_161_12_1532.pdf
PS: LDL receptors?
http://shkrobius.livejournal.com/297603.html?thread=2419843#t2419843