SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Orally infecting mice with a human reovirus resulted in an immune response against gluten and led to symptoms of celiac disease in the rodents, researchers reported today (April 6) in Science. Reoviruses are prevalent in humans; while children are commonly infected with them, reoviruses are not known to cause disease in people. But the results of this mouse study suggest that a reovirus infection may spur development of celiac disease in certain individuals.
"It's been hypothesized for decades that virus infection can trigger autoimmune processes. This study provides an example of that phenomenon and some mechanistic insight into how this might work for celiac disease," said Herbert Virgin, a virologist at the University of Washington, who has collaborated with some of the study's authors but was not involved in the present work.
An inflammatory immune response develops in the guts of individuals with celiac disease when they ingest foods containing gluten, a protein found in wheat. People with celiac disease have a genetic predisposition to gluten intolerance, but prior epidemiological data provided hints that environmental factors, including viral infections, are also associated with initiation of the disorder.
Reovirus infection triggers inflammatory responses to dietary antigens and development of celiac disease (DOI: 10.1126/science.aah5298) (DX)
(Score: 4, Informative) by Joe on Friday April 07 2017, @03:02PM
You are correct. TFA possibly misinterpreted this statement from the abstract of the scientific paper, "Reoviruses commonly infect humans and mice asymptomatically".
Viral nomenclature is a bit of a mess due to a lack of standardization, different preferences for naming, and consolidation of viral families (that were previously thought to be unrelated) due to sequence homology. The "-viridae" usually designates viral families and the "-virus" usually designates genus or species, while clinical isolates will typically add the year/region they are from.
Some examples off the top of my head:
Disease phenotype: Human immunodeficiency virus
Place: Ebola
Virus shape: Coronavirus
Viral genome structure: Mononegavirales
Mismatch: Rhinovirus (common cold) in the Enterovirus genus (associated with the intestines)
Other: Mamavirus and Mimivirus
- Joe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Committee_on_Taxonomy_of_Viruses [wikipedia.org]