Highlighting the observation that parents – as compared to non-parents – apparently have an improved regulation of immune factors, or cytokine, triggered in response to infection, a new study by the researchers at the Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburg, has found that parents are at a much lower risk of catching cold vis-à-vis non-parents.

According to the findings of the study, being a parent seemingly brings about a reduction in a person’s risk of catching a cold; with the researchers chiefly attributing this observation to a possible link with "psychological or behavioral differences between parents and non-parents."

As per the study, published in the July issue of Psychosomatic Medicine - the official Journal of the American Psychosomatic Society -, there is a nearly 50 percent lower risk of falling ill, after exposure to cold viruses, in parents as compared to non-parents, irrespective of the existence of any earlier immunity.

The findings of the study – led by Carnegie Mellon University’s Rodlescia S. Sneed and Sheldon Cohen – were based on the analysis of data on 795 adults from three previous studies on stress and social factors which have an impact on a person’s susceptibility to common colds.

With researchers finding that parents had a lower rate of colds than the non-parent adults who participated in the study, Cohen said in a press release: "Although parenthood was clearly protective, we were unable to identify an explanation for this association.”