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On a December afternoon, 13 days before the winter solstice, six men and women checked into the Surrey Clinical Research Facility, part of the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom After having their noses swabbed to check for 16 different respiratory viruses, they walked into their own temperature-regulated rooms and, for 24 hours, each person stayed in a semirecumbent position in dim light Nurses placed a cannula into a vein of each person’s arm, allowing easy sampling of blood that flowed through a tube to portals in the wall The six subjects could press buzzers for bathroom breaks, where the stool and urine were collected, but otherwise, they were alone in the near-dark None of these people were sick And although the shortest day of the year was approaching, their ritual had nothing to do with pagan rites, Yuletide traditions, or the annual hippie gathering at nearby Stonehenge to celebrate the rebirth of the Sun Instead, they were paid volunteers in a study led by infectious disease ecologist Micaela Martinez of Columbia University to investigate a phenomenon recognized 2500 years ago by Hippocrates and Thucydides: Many infectious diseases are more common during specific seasons “It’s a very old question, but it’s not very well studied,” Martinez says
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