Norovirus News and Research

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Norovirus (formerly Norwalk agent) is an RNA virus (taxonomic family Caliciviridae) that causes approximately 90% of epidemic nonbacterial outbreaks of gastroenteritis around the world, and may be responsible for 50% of all foodborne outbreaks of gastroenteritis in the United States.

Stanford scientists describe potential transmission pathways of COVID-19

Much remains unknown about how SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, spreads through the environment.

26 Mar 2020

Nursing home outbreak spotlights coronavirus risk in elder care facilities

An outbreak of coronavirus disease in a nursing home near Seattle is prompting urgent calls for precautionary tactics at America's elder care facilities, where residents are at heightened risk of serious complications from the illness because of the dual threat of age and close living conditions.

2 Mar 2020

FDA issues stern warning to Purell hand sanitizer maker

The U.S. Food and Drug Administrator has issued a strict warning to Purell-maker GOJO Industries, which claims it hand sanitizers can kill pathogens that cause illness in as little as 15 seconds.

29 Jan 2020

Bile acids help norovirus to infect cells of the small intestine

A new study led by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that human noroviruses, the leading viral cause of foodborne illness and acute diarrhea around the world, infect cells of the small intestine by piggybacking on a normal cellular process called endocytosis that cells use to acquire materials from their environment.

31 Dec 2019

Early-life disruption to lymphotoxin pathway in mice can compromise adult immunity to rotavirus

Researchers at the University of Toronto have discovered how a brief disruption to a molecular pathway in the guts of mice before they are born can compromise adult immunity to a common and often deadly intestinal virus.

22 Dec 2019

Research shows how gut microbes affect stomach flu

A new study shows that gut microbes can modulate the severity of norovirus infection (the stomach flu, or the winter vomiting bug), based on the gut location first affected. Published in the journal Nature Microbiology on November 25, 2019, the study indicates new possibilities to treat norovirus infection.

26 Nov 2019

Gut microbes can tamp down or boost the severity of norovirus infection

The highly contagious norovirus causes diarrhea and vomiting and is notorious for spreading rapidly through densely populated spaces, such as cruise ships, nursing homes, schools and day care centers. Each year, it is responsible for some 200,000 deaths, mostly in the developing world.

25 Nov 2019

Tulane virus needs intracellular calcium to replicate

Some gastrointestinal viruses need calcium. They need calcium ions to carry out several essential aspects of viral life, such as entry into host cells, genome replication and building new viruses to invade other cells. The cells invaded by viruses also use calcium. They use it as signals to regulate many of the cells' own processes, but viruses can takeover cellular calcium signaling to satisfy their own needs.

13 Nov 2019

New technology developed to more quickly detect and trace foodborne disease

University of Massachusetts Amherst food scientist Matthew Moore has received two grants from the USDA to apply new technology in an effort to more quickly detect and trace foodborne disease caused by noroviruses and bacteria.

1 Nov 2019

Hand sanitizers are effective, but nothing can beat traditional handwashing

Whether they dangle from keychains, spritz from pens or froth and pump out of clinic and classroom dispensers, hand sanitizers are convenient alternatives to handwashing, and they do work.

9 Oct 2019

Robust replication model of human noroviruses may pave way for effective therapeutics

Zebrafish larvae can serve as a robust replication model of human noroviruses, according to a study published September 19 in the open-access journal PLOS Pathogens by Joana Rocha-Pereira, Peter de Witte and Johan Neyts, of KU Leuven in Belgium, and colleagues.

From PLOS ONE 25 Sep 2019

Want to reduce suicides? Follow the data — to medical offices, motels and even animal shelters

On Kimberly Repp's office wall is a sign in Latin: Hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succurrere vitae. This is a place where the dead delight in helping the living.

23 Sep 2019

How cruise ship passengers should prepare for sickness or injury at sea

Royal Caribbean's gargantuan Oasis of the Seas boasts four outdoor pools and an 82-foot zip line and made quite a splash shortly after its 2014 refurbishment when it added the first Tiffany & Co boutique at sea.

20 Sep 2019

Simple smartphone-based method for detecting extremely low levels of norovirus

A little bit of norovirus - the highly infectious microbe that causes about 20 million cases of food poisoning in the United States each year - goes a long way. Just 10 particles of the virus can cause illness in humans.

27 Aug 2019

Swimming pools could be breeding grounds for diarrhea-causing germs

Summers get along best with swimming pools, spas and other water play regions. The Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) USA has warned that these pools could be the focal point of spread of certain bacteria, parasites and virsues.

1 Jul 2019

Newly discovered antibody broadly inhibits multiple strains of pandemic norovirus

Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health and their colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin and the National Institutes of Health Vaccine Research Center have discovered an antibody that broadly inhibits multiple strains of pandemic norovirus, a major step forward in the development of an effective vaccine for the dreaded stomach virus.

19 Jun 2019

Norovirus structures could help develop therapeutics to fight food-borne illness

Noroviruses are a leading cause of food-borne illness outbreaks, accounting for 58% of all outbreaks and cause 685 million cases worldwide each year. There is no effective therapeutic against them. Having knowledge of the intricate structure of the outer layer of noroviruses, the capsid, which allows the virus to attach to its human host, could help in vaccine development.

13 Jun 2019