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: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Friday April 07 2017, @11:45AM
[O]reovirus - a virus propagating orally and causing gluten intolerance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 3, Insightful) by obfiscator on Friday April 07 2017, @02:25PM (1 child)
I had never heard of a reovirus before this article. The article mentions that doesn't have a definition, but mentions that children are commonly infected with them, and they are not known to cause disease in people.
However, some web searching suggests that they are associated with some diseases in children: [medscape.com] illnesses included symptoms of the common cold, as well as rare cases of neurological diseases.
Rotaviruses are also members of the reoviridae family. [wikipedia.org] Rotaviruses cause gastroenteritis. [cdc.gov]
Seems like reoviruses are known to cause diseases in people, unless the common definition of reovirus is not the family name. Anyone know?
(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]
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @04:05PM (1 child)
i have hypothesized that ms may be due to an unknown viral infection in the brain. people always want to blame the immune system like it's just crazy but i see evidence to the contrary. just because researchers can't see the cause doesn't mean it's not there.
(Score: 2) by Joe on Friday April 07 2017, @05:55PM
The immune system doesn't just go crazy - there is a break-down of immunological tolerance (that may be triggered by an infection) that causes it to improperly recognize healthy tissue as something that needs to be destroyed. The "just because researchers can't see [it] doesn't mean it's not there" argument isn't particularly compelling in the case of a viral infection because there are multiple detection methods that are very sensitive and researchers have very thoroughly looked for such a cause.
Perhaps the strongest evidence against direct viral-induced cellular death in MS are the immunosuppressive therapies (including hematopoietic stem cell transplants). Suppressing the immune system in the context of a lytic virus causing direct pathology would result in enhanced viral replication and tissue damage. We've discussed a recent clinical trial that provides strong evidence that T cells, in particular, seem to drive disease and that removing them can result in no MS relapses in ~70% of patients for at least 13 years.
- Joe
Paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27291994 [nih.gov]
Previous discussion: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=16/06/13/1038232 [soylentnews.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoimmune_disease [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immune_tolerance [wikipedia.org]