A new study from the researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine found that bone marrow cells, as a result of interferons produced in the lung during respiratory infections, are instructed to become antiviral before migrating to the lung to help clear the infection.

Although it is well known that bone marrow cells are an integral part of the immune response, this is the first study to show that bone marrow leukocytes undergo an antiviral programming process before making their way to the lung and are thus better suited to fight the virus.

"Bone marrow cells are more resistant to virus infection and at the same time, when these cells go back to the lung, they are more prepared to fight the infection and more efficient in secreting cytokines, proteins that are essential for boosting the immune response resulting in the clearance of the virus," said Carolina Lopez, the study's lead researcher and assistant professor of microbiology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
To do the study, researchers exposed mice to an aerosolized influenza virus and to other respiratory viruses intranasally. They watched the virus grow and extracted the lungs, blood and bone marrow of the mice at different times after infection to analyze their cytokine and cellular composition, said Lopez.

Researchers found that the infected lung communicates with the bone marrow by relying on interferons, which activate the antiviral programming of the cells in the bone marrow. Once protected, these bone marrow leukocytes can then migrate to the site of the infection and help clear the virus from the lung, according to the study.

Although it's in its early stages of research and findings, the results of this pioneering study can benefit people with compromised immune systems in the future, said Lopez.

"There has not [previously] been a study that associated the lung immune response to the recruitment of cells that have been specifically instructed in the bone marrow," said Lopez.

The results of the study were published in the May issue of Cell Host and Microbe.

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