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futurity_medicine 00007.txt

#Scientists grow norovirus stomach bug in a dish University of Florida rightoriginal Studyposted by Morgan Sherburne-Florida on November 13 2014researchers have grown for the first time a human norovirus in a cell culture dish taking a step toward developing medications to treat the stomach bug that strikes millions of people every year in schools hotels and cruise ships.####The biggest hurdle to doing norovirus research for its entire historyâ ##since it was discovered in 1972â##has been that we can t culture the human viruses in a cell culture dish##says Stephanie Karst associate professor in the molecular genetics and microbiology department at University of Florida College of Medicine.####That complicates every aspect of research. We can t study how it replicates we can t test therapeutics and we can t generate live virus vaccines.####Noroviruses are intestinal viruses that cause violent vomiting and diarrhea. People ill with the virus remain contagious up to three days after they seem to recover. Although a vaccine for these viruses is in clinical trials there is still no medication to combat them. That s in part because researchers have not been able to culture human noroviruses so they can test potential treatmentsâ##until now. In the United states alone human noroviruses cause 19 million to 21 million cases of illness everyâ#year and contribute to 56000 to 71000 hospitalizations and 570 to 800 deaths mostly in young children and older adults. They are resistant to many common disinfectants and very little of the virus is needed to infect a host so a surface may still contain enough virus to infect a person even after it is cleaned. Previous research has speculated that noroviruses primarily target intestinal epithelial cells which line the intestine and protect it from pathogens. But the new study published in the journal Science demonstrates that the virus targets B cells a type of white blood cell common in the intestine.####That s a big surprise##Karst says.####You would think that any virus that s going to target the intestine would instead target the intestinal epithelial cells because that s the first cell the virus is going to encounter.####Researchers were surprised also to find that bacteria present in the body s gut flora also known as commensal bacteria helped the human norovirus infect B cells. Scientists have known long that noroviruses need a particular kind of carbohydrate to infect cells.####What we ve shown is that noroviruses attach to that carbohydrate expressed on commensal bacteria and that this interaction stimulates viral infection of the B cell##Karst says.####This is a really exciting emerging theme. A variety of intestinal viruses seem to exploit the bacteria that are present in our intestines all the time. These viral infections are enhanced by the presence of bacteria in the gut.####Ultimately this system should open up new avenues for norovirus vaccine and antiviral drug development.####Source: University of Floridayou are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license l

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