[Michaelangelica]

Robyn Williams: Unpleasant it is, but what to do about it? John Tagg is Professor of Microbiology at the University of Otago in Dunedin, and he has some good germs to fight the bad ones.

John Tagg: There is a possibility. As a result of an outcome of our work over the last 30 years we have identified some friendly bacteria; they're called Streptococcus salivarius.

Mostly people may think of Streptococcus as a bad guy, 'Strep' sore throat, but we've been working with the cousins of Strep pyogenes, the bad one, the one that causes sore throats. Salivarius is distinctly helpful, it lives on the tongue, that's the only place on the planet where you will find Streptococcus salivarius, and if we can get its numbers up it can do several good things for you.

It can give you sweet breath, it can actually be a treatment for halitosis, but in the case of people about to embark on a flight, if you take a slug of Strep salivarius lozenges, what it does is actually give your local immune system a bit of shake-up, a bit of a jolt.

What we find is that some of the things called interferons in your saliva actually increase about three or four hours after you take this slug of Strep salivarius, and we think this is a way to provide some short-term protection against the viruses in that person.

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Science Show - 1December2007 - The bacteria you want