Journal article

Rotavirus infection induces transient pancreatic involution and hyperglycemia in weanling mice

MC Honeyman, D Laine, Y Zhan, S Londrigan, C Kirkwood, LC Harrison

Plos One | Published : 2014

Open access

Abstract

Rotavirus is a ubiquitous double-stranded RNA virus responsible for most cases of infantile gastroenteritis. It infects pancreatic islets in vitro and is implicated as a trigger of autoimmune destruction of islet beta cells leading to type 1 diabetes, but pancreatic pathology secondary to rotavirus infection in vivo has not been documented. To address this issue, we inoculated 3 week-old C57Bl/6 mice at weaning with rhesus rotavirus, which is closely related to human rotaviruses and known to infect mouse islets in vitro. Virus was quantified in tissues by culture-isolation and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. A requirement for viral double stranded RNA was investigated in toll-like recepto..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Grants

Awarded by National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (NHMRC)


Funding Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a Program Grant (305500) from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (NHMRC) (to LCH). DL was in receipt of a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. LCH is a Senior Principal Research Fellow of the NHMRC. This work was made possible through Victorian State Government Operational Infrastructure Support and Australian National Health and Medical Research Council Research Institute Infrastructure Support Scheme. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.