( Reuters ) - It used to be called the common cold. Now scientists are starting to put some not-so-common names to the hundreds of viruses that make people cough, sneeze, wheeze and worse.
This week they described how new research techniques are uncovering a host of new respiratory viruses -- including a new, monster-sized virus -- and spurring efforts to better understand the role of these viruses in disease.
"We've added a bunch of viruses, some of which we have never heard of before," said Kenneth McIntosh of Harvard Medical School, speaking at a microbiology meeting in Chicago.
Many of these newly named viruses have been causing coughs and runny noses for hundreds of years, alongside better-known viruses such as rhinoviruses and adenoviruses.
But scientists have only recently had the molecular research tools to identify these bugs, McIntosh said.
"We know they are there ... but we don't know what we really need to know about their capacity to produce disease," he said.
That information may prove to be important as cold viruses are the main culprit behind 50 percent to 80 percent of asthma attacks.
"In children, up to 80 percent of the time when you have a bad asthma attack, it's because you've got one of these wimpy cold viruses," said Dr. Jim Gern of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.