Norovirus

We've almost all been hit with a horror stomach bug. At best, it's a 24-hour nightmare, and at worst it's deadly. But huge strides are being taken towards the first Salmonella and norovirus vaccines, which could make severe illness a distant memory.

If you’ve ever eaten something questionable and gotten sick for a few days, chances are you’ve had a norovirus. It's surprisingly tricky to treat or prevent, but now scientists have made progress on a vaccine by tweaking a different foodborne virus.

Although fresh produce is usually quite a healthy food choice, there's always a risk that it may be contaminated with norovirus. That said, new research now indicates that a fruit-derived coating helps eliminate such viruses more effectively than ever before.

A team of researchers has discovered that the norovirus bug can escape destruction by hiding in a rare type of cell found in the gut. Norovirus is the leading cause of non-bacterial gastroenteritis, which causes 267 million infections, and 200,000 deaths worldwide each year.

To shed further light on how norovirus, one of the world's most common pathogens, spreads between humans, scientists have built a vomiting machine to study its behaviour when projected into the air.