Why the study?
Does host selenium deficiency cause a benign coxsackievirus to become virulent and induce cardiac pathology in mice?
Does host selenium deficiency cause a benign coxsackievirus to become virulent and induce cardiac pathology in mice?
Host nutritional status, specifically selenium deficiency, can drive the mutation of a benign virus into a virulent genotype capable of causing cardiomyopathy.
Selenium deficiency may promote coxsackievirus virulence in mice; leaves open whether repletion alters human myocarditis risk.
Coxsackieviruses have been implicated as possible co-factors in the etiology of the selenium (Se)-responsive cardiomyopathy known as Keshan disease. Here we report that a cloned and sequenced amyocarditic coxsackievirus B3 (CVB3/0), which causes no pathology in the hearts of Se-adequate mice, induces extensive cardiac pathology in Se-deficient mice. CVB3/0 recovered from the hearts of Se-deficient mice inoculated into Se-adequate mice induced significant heart damage, suggesting mutation of the virus to a virulent genotype. We demonstrate the important role of host nutritional status in determining the severity of a viral infection.
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Beck et al. (1994) studied this question.
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