Nervous system actively stops Salmonella from infecting body
New research by scientists at Harvard Medical School has found that nerves in the guts of mice do not merely sense the presence of Salmonella but actively protect against infection by this dangerous bacterium by deploying two lines of defense. The study, published today in Cell, casts in a new light the classic view of the nervous system as a mere watchdog that spots danger and alerts the body to its presence. The results show that by directly interfering with Salmonella’s ability to infect the intestines, the nervous system is both a detector of danger and a defender against it. “Our results show the nervous system is not just a simple sensor-and-alert system,” said neuro-immunologist Isaac Chiu, the study’s lead investigator and assistant professor of immunology in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School. “We have found that nerve cells in the gut go above and beyond. They regulate gut immunity, maintain gut homeostasis and...