Development of the golden Syrian hamster model of COVID-19

National Institute Of Allergy And Infectious Diseases

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

The IRF evaluated the disease progression after intranasal SARS-CoV-2 exposure in young (56 weeks old), aged (60week-old) wild-type (WT) golden Syrian hamsters, and adult (1422 weeks old) hamsters expressing the human ACE2 (hACE2) receptor. Disease was characterized by clinical observations along with virological, histopathological, and radiological assessments. Virus-exposed young and aged WT hamsters developed moderate to severe interstitial pneumonia, which reflects different aspects of human disease. Aged subjects demonstrated more severe disease than younger ones with more weight loss, increased lung pathology and abnormal imaging findings. Infection was uniformly lethal in adult hACE2 hamsters, most likely due to the neurological disease which is evident by histopathology and imaging. The hACE2 hamster model is not considered to be a model representative of human disease as lung disease is mild. PET with CT was successfully incorporated in these studies and indicated further support of the WT hamster model for pre-clinical countermeasure screening.