scholarly journals Viruses and Metabolism: The Effects of Viral Infections and Viral Insulins on Host Metabolism

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 373-391
Author(s):  
Khyati Girdhar ◽  
Amaya Powis ◽  
Amol Raisingani ◽  
Martina Chrudinová ◽  
Ruixu Huang ◽  
...  

Over the past decades, there have been tremendous efforts to understand the cross-talk between viruses and host metabolism. Several studies have elucidated the mechanisms through which viral infections manipulate metabolic pathways including glucose, fatty acid, protein, and nucleotide metabolism. These pathways are evolutionarily conserved across the tree of life and extremely important for the host's nutrient utilization and energy production. In this review, we focus on host glucose, glutamine, and fatty acid metabolism and highlight the pathways manipulated by the different classes of viruses to increase their replication. We also explore a new system of viral hormones in which viruses mimic host hormones to manipulate the host endocrine system. We discuss viral insulin/IGF-1-like peptides and their potential effects on host metabolism. Together, these pathogenesis mechanisms targeting cellular signaling pathways create a multidimensional network of interactions between host and viral proteins. Defining and better understanding these mechanisms will help us to develop new therapeutic tools to prevent and treat viral infections.

Author(s):  
William B. McCombs ◽  
Cameron E. McCoy

Recent years have brought a reversal in the attitude of the medical profession toward the diagnosis of viral infections. Identification of bacterial pathogens was formerly thought to be faster than identification of viral pathogens. Viral identification was dismissed as being of academic interest or for confirming the presence of an epidemic, because the patient would recover or die before this could be accomplished. In the past 10 years, the goal of virologists has been to present the clinician with a viral identification in a matter of hours. This fast diagnosis has the potential for shortening the patient's hospital stay and preventing the administering of toxic and/or expensive antibiotics of no benefit to the patient.


Author(s):  
Mohamed Ibrahim Elzagheid

: Nucleosides and their analogues have been in use for many years and have become essential for treating patients with viral infections. Many additional nucleoside drugs have been approved over the past decades. This strongly demonstrates how important these compounds are and the crucial role they play. Given that a significant amount of research and literature has been documented regarding nucleoside analogues, this review article mainly focuses the discussion on nucleosides and nucleoside analogous that have proven to play significant role or be emerging in the treatment of known viral infections. This covers the names, structures, applications, toxicity, and mode of action of relevant nucleoside analogues.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 88
Author(s):  
Christoph Zurl ◽  
Martin Hoenigl ◽  
Eduard Schulz ◽  
Stefan Hatzl ◽  
Gregor Gorkiewicz ◽  
...  

Viral infections can cause acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), consequently leading to susceptibility for secondary pulmonary infections. Over the past few weeks, a number of studies have reported on secondary pulmonary aspergillosis complicating severe COVID-19. We report the case of a 53-year old male patient with secondary acute myeloid leukemia (AML) who suffered from COVID-19 ARDS and was diagnosed postmortem with mucormycosis.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 175628482098819
Author(s):  
Klaudia Farkas ◽  
Daniella Pigniczki ◽  
Mariann Rutka ◽  
Kata Judit Szántó ◽  
Tamás Resál ◽  
...  

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak emerged in December 2019 in China and rapidly spread worldwide. Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients are likely to be more susceptible to viral infections, and this is significantly influenced by the type of therapy they receive. Thus, issues specifically concerning the medical treatment of IBD patients were shortly addressed at the beginning of the pandemic. However, recently available data on the occurrence and outcome of SARS-CoV-2 infection in IBD patients does not address the concerns raised at the beginning of the pandemic. Growing evidence and the rapid changes happening over the past few weeks have helped elucidate the current situation, contribute to our understanding of the disease, and many previously raised questions could now be answered. We hereby summarise available evidence regarding viral infections and IBD, focusing on SARS-CoV infections, and we provide practical recommendations related to patient management during the COVID-19 pandemic era.


1993 ◽  
Vol 264 (6) ◽  
pp. R1065-R1070 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. M. Surina ◽  
W. Langhans ◽  
R. Pauli ◽  
C. Wenk

The influence of macronutrient content of a meal on postprandial fatty acid oxidation was investigated in 13 Caucasian males after consumption of a high-fat (HF) breakfast (33% carbohydrate, 52% fat, 15% protein) and after an equicaloric high-carbohydrate (HC) breakfast (78% carbohydrate, 6% fat, 15% protein). The HF breakfast contained short- and medium-chain fatty acids, as well as long-chain fatty acids. Respiratory quotient (RQ) and plasma beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHB) were measured during the 3 h after the meal as indicators of whole body substrate oxidation and hepatic fatty acid oxidation, respectively. Plasma levels of free fatty acids (FFA), triglycerides, glucose, insulin, and lactate were also determined because of their relationship to nutrient utilization. RQ was significantly lower and plasma BHB was higher after the HF breakfast than after the HC breakfast, implying that more fat is burned in general and specifically in the liver after an HF meal. As expected, plasma FFA and triglycerides were higher after the HF meal, and insulin and lactate were higher after the HC meal. In sum, oxidation of ingested fat occurred in response to a single HF meal.


animal ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 933-940 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Torno ◽  
S. Staats ◽  
S. de Pascual-Teresa ◽  
G. Rimbach ◽  
C. Schulz

Author(s):  
Ho Him Wong ◽  
Sumana Sanyal

Autophagy is an evolutionarily conserved central process in host metabolism. Among its major functions are conservation of energy during starvation, recycling organelles, and turnover of long-lived proteins. Besides, autophagy plays a critical role in removing intracellular pathogens and very likely represents a primordial intrinsic cellular defence mechanism. More recent findings indicate that it has not only retained its ability to degrade intracellular pathogens, but also functions to augment and fine tune antiviral immune responses. Interestingly, viruses have also co-evolved strategies to manipulate this pathway and use it to their advantage. Particularly intriguing is infection-dependent activation of autophagy with positive stranded (+)RNA virus infections, which benefit from the pathway without succumbing to lysosomal degradation. In this review we summarise recent data on viral manipulation of autophagy, with a particular emphasis on +RNA viruses and highlight key unanswered questions in the field that we believe merit further attention.


Cancers ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 2750
Author(s):  
Pierre-Olivier Frappart ◽  
Thomas G. Hofmann

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) represents 90% of pancreatic malignancies. In contrast to many other tumor entities, the prognosis of PDAC has not significantly improved during the past thirty years. Patients are often diagnosed too late, leading to an overall five-year survival rate below 10%. More dramatically, PDAC cases are on the rise and it is expected to become the second leading cause of death by cancer in western countries by 2030. Currently, the use of gemcitabine/nab-paclitaxel or FOLFIRINOX remains the standard chemotherapy treatment but still with limited efficiency. There is an urgent need for the development of early diagnostic and therapeutic tools. To this point, in the past 5 years, organoid technology has emerged as a revolution in the field of PDAC personalized medicine. Here, we are reviewing and discussing the current technical and scientific knowledge on PDAC organoids, their future perspectives, and how they can represent a game change in the fight against PDAC by improving both diagnosis and treatment options.


2017 ◽  
Vol 74 (5) ◽  
pp. 1371-1381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdullah S. Madhun ◽  
Vidar Wennevik ◽  
Ove T. Skilbrei ◽  
Egil Karlsbakk ◽  
Øystein Skaala ◽  
...  

In 2014, 129 farmed salmon escapees captured in an upstream-migration trap located in the river Etne, western Norway, were investigated for viral infections, age at escape, size, and genetic composition. The frequency of escapees positive for salmonid alphavirus (SAV), piscine orthoreovirus (PRV), and infectious salmon anaemia virus (ISAV) was 12, 79, and <1%, respectively. Fatty acid analysis demonstrated that the individuals had escaped from farms at different stages of the production cycle, although the majority had probably escaped from farms in the same year as their capture in the river. Genetic analyses demonstrated that the escapees originated from multiple farms. This was also supported by the distribution of fish size and timing of entry into the river. A combination of genetic, fatty acid and viral infection analyses showed that in the river Etne in 2014: (i) most of the fish entering the river were infected with one or more viruses, (ii) the majority of them had escaped in the same year that they entered the river, (ii) they originated from multiple farm sources, and (iv) two of the identified genetic groups likely originated from two recent and distinct escape events. This is the first study to integrate results from multiple analytical methods in order to reveal the ecological and genetic diversity of escaped farmed fish entering a river with native salmon population throughout an entire season.


F1000Research ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 533 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tilman Sauerbruch ◽  
Robert Schierwagen ◽  
Jonel Trebicka

Portal hypertension is one cause and a part of a dynamic process triggered by chronic liver disease, mostly induced by alcohol or incorrect nutrition and less often by viral infections and autoimmune or genetic disease. Adequate staging - continuously modified by current knowledge - should guide the prevention and treatment of portal hypertension with defined endpoints. The main goals are interruption of etiology and prevention of complications followed, if necessary, by treatment of these. For the past few decades, shunts, mostly as intrahepatic stent bypass between portal and hepatic vein branches, have played an important role in the prevention of recurrent bleeding and ascites formation, although their impact on survival remains ambiguous. Systemic drugs, such as non-selective beta-blockers, statins, or antibiotics, reduce portal hypertension by decreasing intrahepatic resistance or portal tributary blood flow or by blunting inflammatory stimuli inside and outside the liver. Here, the interactions among the gut, liver, and brain are increasingly examined for new therapeutic options. There is no general panacea. The interruption of initiating factors is key. If not possible or if not possible in a timely manner, combined approaches should receive more attention before considering liver transplantation.


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