Blood Borne Viruses Target Gut Neurons

There are a number of people who are otherwise healthy who suddenly develop bowel motility problems, and we don’t understand why,” said Thaddeus S. Stappenbeck, MD, PhD, the Conan Professor of Laboratory and Genomic Medicine and the study’s co-senior author. “But now we believe that one explanation could be that you can get a viral infection that results in your immune cells killing infected neurons in your gut. That might be why all of a sudden you can’t move things along any more.” Postdoctoral researcher and first author James White, PhD, was studying mice infected with West Nile virus, a mosquito-borne virus that causes inflammation in the brain, when he noticed something peculiar. The intestines of some of the infected mice were packed with waste higher up and empty farther down, as if they had a blockage https://www.technologynetworks.com/neuroscience/news/blood-borne-viruses-target-gut-neurons-310354?utm_campaign=Newsletter_TN_BreakingScienceNews&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=66458113&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--0sw3LPvPtoAxmwJycc3KElE9z0qSmDIHQoMzkYl6e6dIb_mBfJt7wdCxF1vZeK7-dbqcCow_4kP6hryQ8cGWXLJD49Q&_hsmi=66458113