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[Clinical Infectious Diseases] Simulation of the clinical and pathological manifestations of COVID-19 in golden Syrian hamster model: implications for disease pathogenesis and transmissibility

Clinical Infectious Diseases, 26 Mar 2020

Jasper Fuk-Woo Chan, Anna Jinxia Zhang, Shuofeng Yuan, Vincent Kwok-Man Poon, Chris Chung-Sing Chan, Andrew Chak-Yiu Lee, Wan-Mui Chan, Zhimeng Fan, Hoi-Wah Tsoi, Lei Wen, Ronghui Liang, Jianli Cao, Yanxia Chen, Kaiming Tang, Cuiting Luo, Jian-Piao Cai, Kin-Hang Kok, Hin Chu, Kwok-Hung Chan, Siddharth Sridhar, Zhiwei Chen, Honglin Chen, Kelvin Kai-Wang To, Kwok-Yung Yuen

A latest animal test on hamsters conducted by HKU researchers shows that the blood serum from hamsters recovered from COVID-19 have significantly reduced the viral loads in other subjects.

Sequence variation of ACE2 residues interacting with SARS-CoV-2 spike RBD
Sequence variation of ACE2 residues interacting with SARS-CoV-2 spike RBD
Histopathological changes of upper and lower respiratory tract tissues at days 7 and 14 after SARS-CoV-2 infection
At 7dpi, nasal turbinate tissue (left panel) showed mild submucosal infiltration (Histopathological changes of upper and lower respiratory tract tissues at days 7 and 14 after SARS-CoV-2 infection)

Highlights:

  • A physiological small animal model that resembles COVID-19 with low mortality is lacking.
  • All infected hamsters recovered and developed mean serum neutralizing antibody titre ≥1:427 fourteen days post-challenge.
  • The hamsters infected with SARS-CoV-2 could pass the virus to the healthy ones when housed in the same cages, which is similar to how the virus can spread in a family.
  • SARS-CoV-2 caused severe damage to the lungs, trachea, and intestines of the infected hamsters within the first seven days of infection.
  • The hamsters recovered from SARS-CoV-2 infection starting at around day 7 post-infection.
  • Passive immunization with convalescent sera from recovered hamsters significantly reduced the viral loads by ten times in the treated naive hamsters.
  • Besides satisfying the Koch’s postulates, this readily available hamster model is an important tool for studying transmission, pathogenesis, treatment, and vaccination against SARS-CoV-2.

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