Why the study?
It remains unclear what confers plasticity to enteric viruses such as picornaviruses and astroviruses and enables them to infect cells across the gut and brain axes.
This review summarizes current knowledge on how neurotropic enteric viruses transition from the gut to the nervous system and the mechanisms of their attenuation.
Alerts clinicians to encephalitis risk in immunocompromised children with enteric picornavirus or astrovirus; leaves open neuroinvasion mechanisms for targeted study.
The intricate connection between the gut and the brain involves multiple routes. Several viral families begin their infection cycle in the intestinal tract. However, amongst the long list of viral intestinal pathogens, picornaviruses, and astroviruses stand out for their ability to transition from the intestinal epithelia to central or peripheral nervous system cells. In immunocompromised, neonates and young children, these viral infections can manifest as severe diseases, such as encephalitis, meningitis, and acute flaccid paralysis. What confers this remarkable plasticity and makes them efficient in infecting cells of the gut and the brain axes? Here, we review the current understanding of the virus infection along the gut-brain axis for some enteric viruses and discuss the molecular mechanisms of their attenuation.
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Lulla et al. (2024) studied this question.
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