Zainol Akhbar Zainal
Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Cyberjaya, 63000 Cyberjaya, Selangor, Malaysia
Introduction
Have you ever had symptoms of roughness or soreness of the throat, development of nasal discharge, sneezing, and irritation of the upper respiratory tract before? Well, most people in the world have and those are the classic symptoms of the common cold. The common cold is an infection of the upper respiratory tract (URT) caused by approximately more than 200 different viruses. In 2004, the United States Census Bureau, International Data Base reported that approximately 1 billion of cold cases are reported each year, mostly affecting children. In Malaysia, the extrapolated incidence of the common cold in 2004 almost reaches 5.5 million cases.