Asian Scientist (Sep 17, 2013) – An international team of researchers have found a crucial pathway for defending the human gut against infection, providing much needed insight into how the gut fights infection.
In their study, published in Nature, the researchers found that virulent E. coli bacteria blocked a pathway that would normally protect the gut from infection. These infections are particularly serious in young children and can result in diarrhea and other complications such as kidney damage.
The role of this pathway in fighting gut infection was previously unknown but defects in it are associated with inflammatory bowel disease.
Senior author Professor Elizabeth Hartland from the University of Melbourne said the research improved our understanding of what happens when this pathway doesn’t work as well as it should.
“This research provides a model where we can look at how these bacteria switch off a critical pathway in our body that helps fight infection and contributes to normal intestinal function,” she said.
“Using this fundamental knowledge, we can conduct further studies and work towards improving therapies and treatments for people with inflammatory bowel disease, which affects around 5 million people worldwide”
The researchers found the diarrhea-causing bacteria use a needle-like structure to inject a toxin into the gut cell that blocks cell death. This allows the bacteria to survive and spread in the gut, causing a range of diseases.
The injected toxin paralyzes the infected cell’s ability to send messages to immune cells which would normally sense and eliminate dangerous microbes from the body as well as alert the broader immune system to mount a response to the infection.
Diarrheal infections are predominantly a problem in developing countries where sanitation is poor, yet cases of virulent E. coli also occur in developed countries.
The article can be found at: Pearson et al. (2013) A Type III Effector Antagonizes Death Receptor Signalling During Bacterial Gut Infection.
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Source: University of Melbourne; Photo: NIAID/Flickr/CC.
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