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No one enjoys being sick, especially when it involves re-living what you or your kid
had for dinner last night.
But so-called stomach bugs or “stomach flus” are more than uncomfortable—they kill hundreds
of thousands of people every year, including many children.
And right now, there’s not a whole lot we can do once these viruses take hold.
We don’t have antivirals for them, like we have for HIV or the actual flu.
Doctors can provide supportive care, like lots of fluids, but nothing to
slow or stop the actual infection.
Or, I should say, nothing yet.
A new study published last week in Science Immunology has renewed the hope that, one
day, these diseases will be treatable.
The research highlights an exciting new medicine that weaponizes
our own immune system to combat these nasty viruses!
And it may end up helping treat all sorts of awful viral infections.
Stomach bugs—or, more technically, the viruses that cause viral gastroenteritis—aren’t just an inconvenience.
While these infections aren’t considered deadly, the dehydration they can cause is.
And symptoms like nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea tend to be more severe in children under 5.
That’s why the World Health Organization and other healthcare professionals are eager
to find ways to treat infections from rotaviruses and noroviruses—
the chief viruses whichcause gastroenteritis.
Both are notorious for their ability to survive outside of people for a long time and spread
really rapidly once they find a group of potential hosts.
And they’re unfortunately super common: almost every child in the world will have
contracted rotavirus at least once before their 5th birthday, and noroviruses infect
hundreds of millions of people every year.
Now, there are rotavirus vaccines, but none for noroviruses—not for a lack of trying.
And while vaccines are great, they can be hard to get in some areas, and they aren’t 100% effective, either.
Plus they only work if your body can launch a proper immune response, which is not the
case for people who are immunocompromised.
So what doctors would really like is a way to fight these infections when they inevitably do happen.
And they think they’ve got a pretty neat way to do that:
by boosting the body’s own attack!
You see, both rotaviruses and noroviruses make themselves at home in the very cells
meant to protect us from them: epithelial cells.
You can find these cells all over our bodies—everywhere that’s exposed to the outside world in some way.
So: your skin, the lining of your throat, and your entire digestive system, which
yes, even though your intestines are inside you, the inner lining of them is exposed to
food and other things you bring in from the outside world via your mouth.
These intestinal epithelial cells also perform
the essential task of balancing the movement of water and nutrients
to keep your digestive system running smoothly.
So when they’re infected, the small intestine stops absorbing what it should, grinding the
actual digestion process to a halt.
That ultimately means a bunch of undigested material makes it to the colon.
And all that stuff that shouldn’t be there draws water out of the body, leading to diarrhea
and the potential for severe dehydration.
But it’s not like the body just is sitting there while all this is happening.
When someone gets infected with a rotavirus or a norovirus, their immune system starts
producing molecules called cytokines, which sound the alarm that viral particles have
been detected and launch the defensive assault.
Like, some cytokines cause changes within epithelial cells that keep the virus from
being able to attach or replicate in them.
The new research attempts to harness some of the useful powers of cytokines.
And early results are promising — at least in mice.
The team found that a pair of cytokines named IL-18 and IL-22
worked together to knock out stomach bugs.
IL-18 tells infected epithelial cells to die off, whereas IL-22 tells all epithelial cells
to replicate faster, increasing their turnover at the infection site.
And because of both of those actions, the duo was able to rapidly eliminate rotaviruses
and noroviruses from the animals.
This study may be the first step towards developing a targeted treatment that could quickly and
efficiently rid anyone of the quote “stomach flu”.
Not only did work well, it could theoretically be administered to people with compromised
immune systems, since it doesn’t rely on a fully-functioning immune system to work.
And it is not just a potential stomach bug cure.
It could be used against any virus that targets short-lived epithelial cells
including the coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic!
Of course, we’re going to need more research to know whether this treatment will work in
people and also be safe in people who are, ya know, not mice.
But even if this particular cocktail doesn’t make it to market, this strategy of weaponizing
our immune systems to stamp out viruses will likely be a big part of the future of medicine.
Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow news!
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