Some enteroviruses promote gut health, while others cause gut inflammation

Editor’s Pick: Study results suggest people with inflammatory bowel disease may benefit from replacing disease-causing enteroviruses with health-promoting viruses the treatment.

IBD, which includes Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, is characterized by chronic intestinal inflammation and is thought to be caused by genetics, an overactive immune system response, and environmental triggers caused jointly.

“IBD has altered fecal virions, suggesting a role for the virus in the pathogenesis of these diseases. However, we stalled on the correlation.” Senior author Jeffrey, Ph.D., is a researcher in MGH’s Division of Gastroenterology and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. When Jeffrey and her colleagues isolated the virus from surgical tissue from a patient’s colon, they found that the virus in the normal gut has anti-inflammatory properties that contribute to a healthy gut. Instead, viruses isolated from the guts of people with inflammatory bowel disease triggered inflammation. The research team classified the virus as unique to IBD patients so that their findings could be used in future research and clinical studies.

In another experiment, mice were protected from intestinal inflammation after replacing normal mouse enteroviruses with viruses from healthy human colons; however, After replacing the enterovirus with one associated with IBD, the mice had worse inflammation.

“Enterovirions are formed from birth and continue to form throughout life, including a large number of known viruses and a large amount of ‘dark matter’ that we cannot yet identify, “Our work provides a missing functional link, our collective viral population is an important contributor to human health, but when disturbed, does trigger inflammation, in IBD and many conceivable,” said Dr. Jeffrey. Other diseases.”

IBD patients may benefit from treatments that control virions, either through targeted elimination (with vaccines or antiviral drugs), Dr. Jeffrey noted. ), or replacing disease-causing enteroviruses with health-promoting viruses, such as virion transfer, similar to fecal transfer.

Source: Massachusetts General Hospital

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