Where did the tummy bug go off to?
April 24, 2022 2:26 AM Subscribe
Stomach bug just tore thru a friend's family. All but one had diarrhea and vomiting, one person even had a convulsive fainting spell. The last person to get it had all the same symptoms building up, massive nausea and tummy gurgles and moaning for hours, but they did lots of slow breathing and eventually fell asleep. 3 hours later they woke up with no symptoms, but worried. Is this a thing? How did they dispatch the virus without expelling like everybody else? Are they safe? Sorry if silly question.
Not any kind of doctor, but I get this kind of virus every year or two. I don't believe there's any connection between recovery and "expelling" the virus by vomiting/diarrhea. The virus irritates the system to cause the nausea/diarrhea, and then is defeated by the immune system. It's not "expelled." I hope this clarification is not too far off; it's what my own docs have told me.
posted by JimN2TAW at 4:37 AM on April 24, 2022 [20 favorites]
posted by JimN2TAW at 4:37 AM on April 24, 2022 [20 favorites]
Something else that might be relevant is that nausea and gut pain are the body's standard rapid responses to any attack against the gut surface, and evolved because so many of the things that attack the gut are either poisons in their own right or lifeforms capable of rapid reproduction inside GI tract contents, which makes clearing those out via vomiting and diarrhoea a useful tactic for quickly reducing attack severity.
Viruses are a bit different, though. For a virus to cause severe GI symptoms it needs to be hijacking the cells of the gut wall itself for use as reproduction factories. By the time it's doing that to any noticeable extent, the war that the body is fighting to shut down viral reproduction is happening almost entirely within the body's own tissues, and the amount of virus being shed into the GI tract after reproducing within those tissues affects the progress of that war much less than if the invaders were capable of independent reproduction. In fact transporting shed viruses rapidly through the whole length of the GI tract as the rest of its contents run screaming for the exits might even make things worse, not better.
From the virus's point of view, the main point of being shed into the GI tract is to help it find more hosts, not so much to help it proliferate within the one it's already found.
So if the disease that ripped through your friend's family was indeed viral, then any given person's recovery would have had much more to do with how well their immune system works than how fast they emptied out their GI tract.
posted by flabdablet at 4:54 AM on April 24, 2022 [11 favorites]
Viruses are a bit different, though. For a virus to cause severe GI symptoms it needs to be hijacking the cells of the gut wall itself for use as reproduction factories. By the time it's doing that to any noticeable extent, the war that the body is fighting to shut down viral reproduction is happening almost entirely within the body's own tissues, and the amount of virus being shed into the GI tract after reproducing within those tissues affects the progress of that war much less than if the invaders were capable of independent reproduction. In fact transporting shed viruses rapidly through the whole length of the GI tract as the rest of its contents run screaming for the exits might even make things worse, not better.
From the virus's point of view, the main point of being shed into the GI tract is to help it find more hosts, not so much to help it proliferate within the one it's already found.
So if the disease that ripped through your friend's family was indeed viral, then any given person's recovery would have had much more to do with how well their immune system works than how fast they emptied out their GI tract.
posted by flabdablet at 4:54 AM on April 24, 2022 [11 favorites]
Are you sure this was a virus and not food poisoning?
posted by Hypatia at 5:55 AM on April 24, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by Hypatia at 5:55 AM on April 24, 2022 [5 favorites]
We just had this too, two members.of a family had vomit and diarrhea one just chills and body ache. Seemed normal to us.
posted by stray at 5:58 AM on April 24, 2022
posted by stray at 5:58 AM on April 24, 2022
Vomiting and diarrhea is not necessary to "expel" the infectious agent. The infection resolves because our immune system gets rid of it, not because we expelled it by vomiting. The person who didn't vomit just had a stronger immune system or was exposed to a smaller amount of infectious material and so their GI tract wasn't hit as hard.
On preview, seconding flabdablet.
posted by M. at 6:37 AM on April 24, 2022 [4 favorites]
On preview, seconding flabdablet.
posted by M. at 6:37 AM on April 24, 2022 [4 favorites]
There are genetic things associated with norovirus resistance.
Here’s a bit of reading on this phenomenon.
posted by sciencegeek at 6:43 AM on April 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
Here’s a bit of reading on this phenomenon.
posted by sciencegeek at 6:43 AM on April 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
Our family had an outbreak last weekend. Three of us had the usual symptoms. One kid just felt rough and had a fever for a couple of days.
posted by pipeski at 6:55 AM on April 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by pipeski at 6:55 AM on April 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
I'm famous among my family and friends for being the one that doesn't really get noroviruses, which is what it sounds like your friend's family had. The thing is, though, that I *do* usually get it, but I just feel tired, crumby and nauseous for a couple of days without proceeding to vomiting and diarrhea. I have no idea why--could be my genetic makeup/immune system, could be luck.
posted by pullayup at 8:03 AM on April 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by pullayup at 8:03 AM on April 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
Maybe they were micro exposed by the other members so by the time they actually succumbed their body knew what to do with it.
Not an immunologist in any way.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 8:21 AM on April 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
Not an immunologist in any way.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 8:21 AM on April 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
It's just a question of immune response. Eventually everybody's immune system will end the thing that's going on, at least in a relatively healthy person with a normal immune response - it doesn't leave through the exit, your body stops it. Some people will knock it down before ever experiencing a symptom, some people may be like "huh, I never take naps but I needed one yesterday, oh well it's a mystery", others may recognize some kind of battle between pathogen and immune system is going on, others may spend the night on the can knowing there's a problem.
When you hear a colloquial reference to something "running its course" that's not a literal description, it means the immune system was exposed long enough to develop a strategy for fighting the thing. In the case of actual viruses, that's a common medical tactic before employing any kind of antiviral or support treatment, in otherwise healthy patients anyway (and with viruses we know are vulnerable enough), because the body's quite good at it.
So your outlier fought it off. But whether this is a viral or bacterial situation it could be wise to increase surface cleanings and hand-washings right now, as in the case of the former households are especially bad at re-cycling these things thanks to virus lingering on surfaces and subsequent face-touching, and in the case of the latter because things like salmonella can easily be spread around the kitchen surfaces (and fridge space, and reusable grocery bags, etc).
posted by Lyn Never at 2:39 PM on April 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
When you hear a colloquial reference to something "running its course" that's not a literal description, it means the immune system was exposed long enough to develop a strategy for fighting the thing. In the case of actual viruses, that's a common medical tactic before employing any kind of antiviral or support treatment, in otherwise healthy patients anyway (and with viruses we know are vulnerable enough), because the body's quite good at it.
So your outlier fought it off. But whether this is a viral or bacterial situation it could be wise to increase surface cleanings and hand-washings right now, as in the case of the former households are especially bad at re-cycling these things thanks to virus lingering on surfaces and subsequent face-touching, and in the case of the latter because things like salmonella can easily be spread around the kitchen surfaces (and fridge space, and reusable grocery bags, etc).
posted by Lyn Never at 2:39 PM on April 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
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posted by BobTheScientist at 2:48 AM on April 24, 2022 [13 favorites]