It norovirus and other stomach viruses that affects millions of people each year can be spread through saliva, British researchers have found in a study recently published in the journal Natural.

The transmission of this so-called enteric virus through saliva shows that coughing, talking, sneezing, sharing food and utensils, and even kissing have the potential to spread the virus.

Researchers have known for some time that enteric viruses, such as norovirus and rotavirus, can be spread by eating food or drink contaminated with feces containing these viruses.

In fact, Enteric viruses are thought to pass through the salivary glands and enter the intestines, then excreted through the feces. Although some scientists have suspected that there may be other routes of transmission, this theory has remained largely unproven until now.

Now researchers need to confirm that transmission of enteric virus through saliva is possible in humans. If they find one, the researchers say, they may also find that this route of transmission is even more common than the conventional route.

“East This is a whole new territory because this virus is thought to only grow in the intestines. Transmission of enteric viruses through saliva is another layer of transmission that we are not aware of. It’s a whole new way of thinking about how these viruses can be transmitted, how they can be diagnosed, and more importantly, how their spread can be reduced.”

Rat pups pass the virus to their mothers after being breastfed

For the current study, the researchers fed a group of newborn mice less than 10 days old with either norovirus or rotavirus. The pups were then returned to the cage and allowed to breastfeed from their mother, who was initially virus-free. Just one day later, the pups showed an increase in IgA antibodies, an important component of fighting disease, in their intestines.

This is surprising given that the immune system of the mouse pups is immature and they are not expected to produce their own antibodies at this stage. Furthermore, the experts noted that virus that replicates in maternal breast tissue (milk duct cells) at high levels.

When they collected milk from the breasts of the mice’s mothers, they found that the timing and rate of IgA spikes in breast milk reflected the timing and extent of IgA spikes in their offspring’s intestines. It appears that infection of the mother’s breast has increased the production of IgA antibodies that fight viruses in breast milkwhich ultimately helped clear the infection in their puppies, the researchers said.

Eager to study how the virus enters the mother’s milk tissue, the researchers conducted additional experiments and found that the pups did not transmit the virus to their mothers by conventional routes. That’s when the researchers decided to see if the virus in the mother’s breast tissue could have come from saliva from infected puppies and somehow spreads during breastfeeding.

To test the theory, they collected saliva and salivary gland samples from mouse pups and found that the salivary glands replicated the virus at very high rates and released large amounts of the virus into the saliva.