Natural gut viruses join bacterial cousins in maintaining health and fighting infections

Microbiologists say they have what may be the first strong evidence that the natural presence of viruses in the gut or ‘virome’, plays a health-maintenance and infection-fighting role similar to that of the intestinal bacteria that dwell there and make up the “microbiome.” In a series of experiments in mice that took two years to complete, the NYU Langone team found that infection with the common murine norovirus, or MNV, helped mice repair intestinal tissue damaged by inflammation and helped restore the gut’s immune defenses after its microbiome had been wiped out by antibiotic therapy. We have known for a long time that people get infected all the time with viruses and bacteria, and they don’t get sick, now we have scientific evidence which has shown that not every viral infection is bad, but it might actually be beneficial to health, just as we know that many bacterial infections are good for maintaining health.