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URL: http://www.avianflutalk.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=37610 Printed Date: March 28 2024 at 3:16am
Topic: How Norovirus Enters BodyPosted By: Technophobe
Subject: How Norovirus Enters Body
Date Posted: July 14 2018 at 5:05am
Virology
A stomach virus’s mysterious path into the gut is uncovered
Mouse experiments show how noroviruses do their dirty work.
Noroviruses inflict diarrhoea and vomiting on
hundreds of millions of people worldwide every year. Now, the gut cells
targeted by the virus have finally been identified in mice.
Noroviruses
are known to infect the immune cells of mice by binding to a receptor
called CD300lf, but that receptor has never been found in the cells
lining the gut. Craig Wilen at Washington University School of Medicine
in St. Louis, Missouri, and his colleagues used a fluorescent marker to
identify mouse gut cells that express CD300lf. The tags revealed that
noroviruses infect tuft cells, a rare type of cell in the gut lining.
This
also explains a puzzling observation from previous studies: why mice
infested with intestinal worms tend to experience worse norovirus
symptoms than mice without worms. Worm infestation leads to a
proliferation of tuft cells, providing more cells for the virus to
infect. The finding also offers an explanation for why antibiotics that
reduce tuft-cell proliferation alleviate norovirus infection.