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Blood Type A May Predispose to Some Rotavirus Infections

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Blood Type A May Predispose to Some Rotavirus Infections Empty Blood Type A May Predispose to Some Rotavirus Infections

Δημοσίευση από medlsc Δευ Απρ 16, 2012 3:33 pm

Blood Type A May Predispose to Some Rotavirus Infections

Blood Type A May Predispose to Some Rotavirus Infections 120415151332

Whether you become infected by some strains of rotavirus may depend on your blood type. Some strains of rotavirus find their way into the cells of the gastrointestinal tract by recognizing antigens associated with the type A blood group, a finding that represents a new paradigm in understanding how this gut pathogen infects humans, said Baylor College of Medicine researchers in an online report in the journal Nature.

Intestinal pathogen


Rotavirus is a major intestinal pathogen that is the leading cause of severe dehydration and diarrhea in infants around the world. An estimated 500,000 people worldwide die from the infection annually.

The structure of a key part of a strain of the virus known as P[14] provides a clue to how the virus infects human cells, said Dr. B. V. Venkataram Prasad, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at BCM and the report's corresponding author.

In strains of rotavirus that infect animals, the top of a spike on the virus attaches to the cell via a glycan (one of many sugars linked together to form complex branched-chain structures) with a terminal molecule of sialic acid. The same did not appear to be true of virus strains that infect humans, and scientists believed the human rotavirus strains were bound to glycans with an internal sialic acid molecule, but they did not know how this occurs.

Surprise finding

"We wondered how this genotype of rotavirus recognized a cellular glycan," said Prasad. "With colleagues at Emory (University School of Medicine), we did a glycan array analysis to see which glycans interacted with the top of the virus spike (called VP8*)."

The only type of glycan that interacted with VP8* was type A histo-blood group antigen, he said.

"That was surprising," he said. "We thought it had to be a glycan with sialic acid."

The histo-blood group antigen A does not have sialic acid.

However, when Dr. Liya Hu, a post-doctoral researcher in Prasad's laboratory, determined the structure of the VP8* domain, she found that the type A glycan bound to the rotavirus spike protein at the same place as the sialic acid would have in an animal rotavirus. Histo-blood group antigens are known to promote binding of norovirus and Helicobacter pylori cells to intestinal cells, but this had never been demonstrated in rotavirus.

more about this article here

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120415151332.htm
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