Publication Date
10-18-2023
Journal
Antimicrobial Stewardship & Healthcare Epidemiology
DOI
10.1128/aac.00636-23
PMID
37787556
PMCID
PMC10583671
PubMedCentral® Posted Date
10-3-2023
PubMedCentral® Full Text Version
Post-print
Published Open-Access
yes
Keywords
Humans, Norovirus, Gastroenteritis, Antiviral Agents, Reference Standards, Caliciviridae Infections, Virus Replication, human norovirus, enteroids, intestinal organoids, nitazoxanide, antivirals, genotypes
Abstract
Human noroviruses (HuNoVs) are the leading cause of acute gastroenteritis. In immunocompetent hosts, symptoms usually resolve within 3 days; however, in immunocompromised persons, HuNoV infection can become persistent, debilitating, and sometimes life-threatening. There are no licensed therapeutics for HuNoV due to a near half-century delay in its cultivation. Treatment for chronic HuNoV infection in immunosuppressed patients anecdotally includes nitazoxanide, a broad-spectrum antimicrobial licensed for treatment of parasite-induced gastroenteritis. Despite its off-label use for chronic HuNoV infection, nitazoxanide has not been clearly demonstrated to be an effective treatment. In this study, we standardized a pipeline for antiviral testing using multiple human small intestinal enteroid lines representing different intestinal segments and evaluated whether nitazoxanide inhibits replication of five HuNoV strains in vitro. Nitazoxanide did not exhibit high selective antiviral activity against any HuNoV strain tested, indicating it is not an effective antiviral for HuNoV infection. Human intestinal enteroids are further demonstrated as a model to serve as a preclinical platform to test antivirals against HuNoVs to treat gastrointestinal disease.