If you’ve eaten something questionable and have been paying off both ends for a few days, you may have norovirus. But this common pathogen is surprisingly difficult to treat or prevent. Researchers are working to develop vaccines by piggybacking on viruses from other foods.
Norovirus is a major cause of gastroenteritis and food poisoning and is highly contagious. For most people, it just means being out of use for a few days, but this stomach bug can lead to complications like Crohn’s disease and, for some people, an increased risk of death.
“Almost everyone has had norovirus at some point,” said Siyuan Ding, senior author of the study. “As soon as I go out to eat, I get vomiting and diarrhea. I recover, but it takes about three days. But for children in developing countries without access to clean water, it can be fatal. .”
Part of the problem is the lack of adequate treatment for norovirus. This is because human norovirus does not infect common laboratory animals, making it difficult to develop drugs by conventional means. I came up with a solution.
Rotavirus is a similar but unrelated microorganism that also causes food poisoning. A vaccine against rotavirus has been around for almost 20 years. Therefore, the team developed a vaccine against norovirus based on rotavirus.
Scientists inserted key norovirus genes into the genome of a harmless rotavirus, causing the rotavirus to form the proteins that make up the outer surface of the norovirus. This live vaccine was administered to 11 baby mice with compromised immune systems.
To test the effectiveness of the vaccine, researchers took blood and fecal samples from each mouse after 4, 6, and 8 weeks, followed by a booster dose after 9 weeks, and another sample after 10 weeks. .
Sure enough, the team detected strong antibody responses to both norovirus and rotavirus in the intestines of all mice and in the blood of 9 of the 11 mice. Neutralize both viruses.
Of course, there is still a lot of work to be done to apply this to humans, but this is an interesting breakthrough. The team says the technology, which uses similar viruses as a base, could lead to new treatments for other diseases that are difficult to develop drugs for.
“There are many enteric pathogens for which there are no good treatments or vaccines,” Ding said. “In principle, the genes of any organism that infects the gut can be put into a rotavirus vaccine to create a bivalent vaccine, although of course you need to find the right targets to generate a good immune response.” , the principle is simple.”
A study was published in a journal PNAS.
Source: Washington University in St. Louis
