Defining the Syrian hamster as a highly susceptible preclinical model for SARS-CoV-2 infection.

ABSTRACT: Following emergence in late 2019, SARS-CoV-2 rapidly became pandemic and is presently responsible for millions of infections and hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide. There is currently no approved vaccine to halt the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and only very few treatment options are available to manage COVID-19 patients. For development of preclinical countermeasures, reliable and well-characterized small animal disease models will be of paramount importance. Here we show that intranasal inoculation of SARS-CoV-2 into Syrian hamsters consistently caused moderate broncho-interstitial pneumonia, with high viral lung loads and extensive virus shedding, but animals only displayed transient mild disease. We determined the infectious dose 50 to be only five infectious particles, making the Syria

SUBMITTER: Rosenke K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7782266 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature