Rhinos (over 150 distinct viruses split across three species) are experts at triggering innate immunity & so they are seen less often in coinfections than other viruses are-even though they are in many coinfections because there are so many rhinos.
They produce a "Shields Up!" effect for a period
For rhinoviruses, interference "was once exploited on a small scale as an in vitro diagnostic tool, whereby successful experimental HRV infection of organ cultures was indicated by blockading the replication of other, subsequently inoculated, respiratory viruses" pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
Human rhinoviruses (HRVs) are often concurrently detected with other viruses found in the respiratory tract because of the high total number of HRV infections occurring throughout the year. This featu...
We also said in 2009 that "In light of this, we have formulated a new hypothesis, that HRV infection can protect its host from infection by other, often more cytopathic, viruses" -& people look askew at me when I get a little ...worked up... over how much the rhinos have been ignored in history. 🙂
