Cold and flu won’t attack you simultaneously, study says

(CNN) - Coughing, sneezing and suffering from an achy breaky body? While having the flu is the worst, here's a bit of good news you can take to bed with you: You won't suffer from a cold simultaneously.

That's the conclusion of a new study that analyzed viral test results of more than 44,000 patients in Glasgow, Scotland, between 2005 and 2013. The study was published Monday in the journal for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"It was clear that flu and rhinovirus -- which causes the common cold -- interact in a negative way," said study author Dr. Pablo Murcia of the University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research. "When there is a lot of flu in the population, there is little rhinovirus, and vice versa."

The finding might explain why colds and flu tend to have different seasonal peaks, which are repeated statistically each year, said lead author Sema Nickbakhsh, a postdoctoral research associate at Glasgow University's Centre for Virus Research.