Abstract
Interleukin-11 (IL-11), a well-known anti-inflammatory factor, provides protection from intestinal epithelium damage caused by physical or chemical factors. However, little is known of the role of IL-11 during viral infections. In this study, IL-11 expression at mRNA and protein levels were found to be high in Vero cells and the jejunum of piglets during porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) infection, while IL-11 expression was found to be positively correlated with the level of viral infection. Pretreatment with recombinant porcine IL-11 (pIL-11) was found to suppress PEDV replication in Vero E6 cells, while IL-11 knockdown promoted viral infection. Furthermore, pIL-11 was found to inhibit viral infection by preventing PEDV-mediated apoptosis of cells by activating the IL-11/STAT3 signaling pathway. Conversely, application of a STAT3 phosphorylation inhibitor significantly antagonized the anti-apoptosis function of pIL-11 and counteracted its inhibition of PEDV. Our data suggest that IL-11 is a newfound PEDV-inducible cytokine, and its production enhances the anti-apoptosis ability of epithelial cells against PEDV infection. The potential of IL-11 to be used as a novel therapeutic against devastating viral diarrhea in piglets deserves more attention and study.
Highlights
Following a worldwide pandemic in the year 2013, porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) has caused immense economic losses to the global swine industry [1,2,3]
IL‐11 expression is elevated in PEDV infected host cells In order to investigate the induction of IL-11 gene transcription during PEDV infection, total RNA from PEDV-infected Vero E6 cells were extracted at the time indicated
IL‐11 expression is highly correlated with PEDV infection in piglets In order to validate the reality of this phenomenon in piglets, changes in IL-11 expression in response to PEDV infection were examined
Summary
Following a worldwide pandemic in the year 2013, porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) has caused immense economic losses to the global swine industry [1,2,3]. Due to the special features of the porcine intestinal mucosal immune system, traditional vaccination methods do not provide effective protection against gastroenteric pathogens. Insufficient immunological protection against PEDV is mainly due to the following: (1) serum antibodies induced by intramuscular immunity that has no effect. The binding of IL-11 to its alpha receptor, IL-11Rα results in a dimeric complex that interacts with GP130 to form a tetrameric complex [10,11,12] This reaction further activates phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K), mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) and the signal transducer and activator of transcription (STAT) [13, 14].
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