Hundreds of Boston residents and some Boston University students who ended up in the emergency room with the norovirus this winter may take comfort in a recent research breakthrough that may help prevent them from getting infected next year.
The first isolated lab culture of the norovirus human strain, often responsible for causing stomach flu, was produced by researchers from Arizona University, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Tulane University and the University of Arizona. The project, published this month in the Centers for Disease Control's Emerging Infectious Diseases journal, came after 30 years of failed attempts to isolate the virus.
Timothy Straub, lead researcher at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, said the research could eventually lead to a vaccine similar to a typical flu shot.
"[The new methods] may provide this critical link in developing new treatments and vaccines," he said.
Tulane University researcher Kerstin Höner zu Bentrup said project members investigated norovirus cells in the same method they observe E. coli and salmonella cells.
Bentrup said the medical community long avoided using this method to study norovirus cells in favor of studying other diseases that were considered more pressing.
"From a pharmaceutical standpoint, a norovirus vaccine is not exactly our first priority," Bentrup said.
Though the norovirus is sometimes life-threatening for elderly patients, it is a "self-limiting" disease and is not usually deadly, especially for typically healthy college-age people, who are generally most affected by the norovirus in the Boston area during winter.
Scientists had also not extensively researched norovirus because few specimens of the virus were available to study.
"For many years, the only way to study the virus was to extract it from a patient's stool," Bentrup said. "This was first of all not very pleasant, and it did not give us a lot of specimens to deal with."
The methods for extracting the virus, however, are less unpleasant than getting the norovirus itself, said School of Public Health professor Dr. David Ozonoff.
"It's a big problem," he said. "Everyone knows what gastroenteritis does to you -- the vomiting, the diarrhea. And it goes on for days."
Norovirus is especially common aboard cruise ships, and more than 300 passengers and crew members were infected with it aboard the luxury liner Queen Elizabeth 2 last month, according to Ozonoff.
Ozonoff said many people do not report their symptoms, so the 20 students treated at Student Health Services this year may only be a small indicator of how many students were infected.
"The actual incidence of norovirus infection may be tens of millions per year," Straub said.
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