Science Immunology<\/a>\u00a0sought to define whether intestinal bacteria influenced some individuals\u2019 vulnerability to secondary bacterial infections following primary respiratory viral infection.<\/p>\nIt examined, in mice, whether segmented filamentous bacteria (SFB), variably present in the intestine of mammals, influenced susceptibility to secondary bacterial infection by common respiratory bacterial pathogens, namely Streptococcus pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenzae, or Staphylococcus aureus, following influenza A virus infection.<\/p>\n
The researchers found that SFB provided marked protection against these highly lethal infections. Much of the morbidity and mortality caused by influenza pandemics results from secondary bacterial infections, suggesting that an individual\u2019s gut microbiota composition may be a pivotal factor in who survives such pandemics.<\/p>\n
SFB\u2019s protection against post-viral secondary bacterial pneumonia was mediated by specialized immune cells called alveolar macrophages. These cells are known to become dysfunctional following influenza viral infection. While SFB resides exclusively on the outer surface of the intestine, it nonetheless epigenetically reprogrammed alveolar macrophages to resist influenza virus-induced dysfunction, thus maintaining their robust defense against respiratory bacterial pathogens.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe intestine is normally colonized by thousands of different bacterial species but yet, incredibly, adding one more completely changes the way that lung macrophages respond to pathogens,\u201d says lead author Vu Ngo, a research assistant professor in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re very hopeful that we\u2019ll soon be able to harness the mechanism by which SFB reprograms alveolar macrophages, yielding novel pharmacologic approaches to mitigate the severity of a broad assortment of respiratory infections,\u201d adds senior author Andrew T. Gewirtz of the Institute for Biomedical Sciences.<\/p>\n
The study was funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the National Institutes of Health.<\/p>\n
Source: Georgia State University<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Share this Article You are free to share this article under the Attribution 4.0 International license. Select gut…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322317,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1913,52683,103,61,60,36420],"class_list":{"0":"post-322316","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-flu","9":"tag-gut-bacteria","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-pneumonia"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}