Faulty virus particles could be a deception to distract the immune system from fighting infectious viruses.
Over three million people become infected with the hepatitis E virus every year. So far there is no specifically effective drug. An international research team has examined which factors are important for the virus in the course of its reproductive cycle and how it manages to maintain the infection. The researchers analyzed various mutations in the virus and found changes that may allow the virus to outsmart the immune system. The team from the Molecular and Medical Virology Department of the Ruhr University Bochum around Dr. Toni Meister, Dr. Daniel Todt and Prof. Dr. Eike Steinmann reports in the journal PNAS.
Advantages and disadvantages of mutations
An important defense mechanism against viral infections in our body are special proteins, the antibodies. These usually bind specifically to surface proteins of the virus in order to make it harmless. But viruses have developed strategies to avoid this identification. During infection with the hepatitis E virus, random mutations often result in virus variants that can coexist within an infected person. The antiviral agent ribavirin, which many chronically infected people receive, can even increase the formation of such viral variants.