Researchers Find New Coronavirus Can Cause Diabetes

JAKARTA – Infection by several enteroviruses or viral genera which commonly cause disease of varying severity is known to be a potential trigger diabetes, although their direct “in vivo” effect and mechanism of action at the molecular level are unknown.

A research team from the Growth Factors, Nutrients and Cancer Group led by Nabil Djouder at the Spanish National Cancer Research Center (CNIO) showed for the first time in Cell Reports Medicine how the coxsackievirus type B4 (CVB4) enterovirus can cause diabetes.

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These findings could be a fundamental step towards paving the way for new therapeutic strategies. The researchers also pointed out that the findings are relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic, as clinical information suggests a possible link between infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus and diabetes.

Reporting from the page Medical Xpress, Wednesday (21/10), Djouder and his team suggested, because the SARS-CoV-2 receptor is expressed in the endocrine pancreas, it can operate and cause diabetes in the same way CVB4 does, regardless of the immune reaction.

Coxsackievirus belongs to the enterovirus family which also includes the polio virus and echovirus, and can cause illnesses from mild flu to more serious illnesses such as myocarditis, pericarditis, meningitis, or pancreatitis. This virus is thought to cause diabetes in humans, but the molecular mechanism is unknown.

With the aim of discovering and describing this mechanism, CNIO researchers worked with an animal model made with human pancreatic cells infected by CVB4, as well as human and mouse insulin-producing cells, which were also infected with the virus. What they observed was that CVB4 infection led to deregulation of URI, a protein that regulates the normal function of various cellular activities.

“In this case, URI downregulation triggers a series of molecular events leading to genome modification via hypermetylation and Pdx1 silencing. These are genes that are essential for the identity and function of beta cells present in the endocrine pancreas, called the Islets of Langerhans, and are responsible for the production and the secretion of insulin, a hormone that lowers blood glucose levels, “explains Djouder, lead author of the work published in Cell Reports Medicine.

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