New E.coli Study Aims to Get Closer to Discovering Food Poisoning Treatments

11 Jul 2016 --- A new study has found that E.coli could be capable of suppressing the immune system. Enterohaemorrhagic E.coli (EHEC) is a major cause of food poisoning in the U.K. with approximately 1,200 cases every year. 

Patients often display serious symptoms that range from diarrhoea to acute kidney failure and neurological damage. 

Often outbreaks can be extremely difficult to trace with one current spate affecting more than 100 people, although the precise source has not yet been identified. 

Currently there is no treatment for EHEC.

Dr. Stephanie Schüller from the Institute of Food Research and the Norwich Medical School at the University of East Anglia is leading a team of researchers studying how EHEC causes disease in the human body. 

It follows previous work carried out by PhD student Steven Lewis, who worked with the Gastroenterology Department of the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, to show that EHEC attaches itself to the lining of the colon where it can go on to trigger serious symptoms associated with infection. 

In this latest study, the research team was interested to see how the lining of the colon, which provides the first line of defence in the body, responds to EHEC infection. 

“Unexpectedly, we found that EHEC infection induced a weak innate immune response and only triggered the release of few antimicrobial proteins that would normally have been seen as the immune system attempts to combat pathogenic bacteria,” says Dr. Schüller. 

The research team now wants to understand how EHEC avoids triggering a full immune response which could add to the overall understanding of the serious pathogen and possibly point towards news ways of combating its effects.