Recently while driving north on the New York State Thruway I passed the exit for the town of Coxsackie, NY (population 8,884). I grabbed my camera and photographed the exit sign, and reminded myself to write about the virus named after this small town. In the summer of 1947 there were several small outbreaks of …
Viruses are known to evade the early, or innate, host defenses by interfering with the sensing of infection, production of IFN, and synthesis and activity of ISGs. Today we’ll examine the evidence that the function of one or more ISGs is blocked in poliovirus-infected cells. When IFN is added to the medium of cultured cells, hundreds of …
The WHO strategy to eradicate poliomyelitis depends upon immunization of every child under 5 years of age, and nationwide AFP (acute flaccid paralysis) surveillance to identify cases of poliomyelitis. A laboratory network then determines whether AFP is caused by poliovirus. Recently a new member of the picornavirus family was identified in children with non-poliovirus AFP. …
The cellular translation machinery is frequently modified in virus-infected cells. Antiviral defense systems or stress responses may be initiated to inhibit protein synthesis and restrict virus replication. On the other hand, many viral genomes encode proteins that modify the cellular translation apparatus to favor the production of viral proteins over those of the cell. One …
Since Monday I have been in Sitges, Spain for Europic 2008. This is a scientific meeting on picornaviruses held every other year in a European country. The picornaviruses are a family of non-enveloped, positive-strand RNA viruses, and includes poliovirus, rhinovirus, and foot-and-mouth disease virus. I have been attending Europic meetings since 1983, when it was …
There is an ongoing outbreak of enterovirus 71 (EV71) in a broad region of Asia, including China, Vietnam, Mongolia, Taiwan, and Singapore. There have been 3606 cases in China, including 36 deaths. Infection with EV71 is common in Asia, where it causes hand-foot-and-mouth disease in children, a febrile syndrome accompanied by flat or raised red …
