We Might Finally Be Able to treat the "Stomach Flu" | Stomach bug | Gastroenteritis(#inmice)

We Might Finally Be Able to treat the "Stomach Flu" | Stomach bug | Gastroenteritis

Stomach flu is 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.

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.

Symptoms of Stomach Flu:

The dehydration they can cause is and symptoms like nausea vomiting and diarrhea tend to be more severe in children under five 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 which cause 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,

They're unfortunately super common almost every child in the world will have contracted rotavirus at least once before their fifth birthday and noroviruses infect hundreds of millions of people every year now there are rotavirus vaccines but none for noroviruses and 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 a 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 are exposed to the outside world in some way so your skin the lining of your throat and your entire digestive the system which yes even though your intestines are inside you the inner lining of they are 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 are infected the small intestine stops absorbing what it should grind the actual digestive the 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 and someone gets infected with rotavirus or a norovirus their immune system starts producing molecules called cytokines which sound the alarm that viral particles have been detected and launched the defense of assault like some cytokines cause changes within epithelial cells.

That keeps 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 it 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 you 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.