Virulence Profiles of Wild-Type, P.1 and Delta SARS-CoV-2 Variants in K18-hACE2 Transgenic Mice

• Autor(a) principal: da Silva Santos, Yasmin
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Outros Autores: Gamon, Thais Helena Martins, de Azevedo, Marcela Santiago Pacheco, Telezynski, Bruna Larotonda, de Souza, Edmarcia Elisa, de Oliveira, Danielle Bruna Leal, Dombrowski, Jamille Gregório, Rosa-Fernandes, Livia, Palmisano, Giuseppe, de Moura Carvalho, Leonardo José, Luvizotto, Maria Cecília Rui [UNESP], Wrenger, Carsten, Covas, Dimas Tadeu, Curi, Rui, Marinho, Claudio Romero Farias, Durigon, Edison Luiz, Epiphanio, Sabrina
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UNESP
• Texto Completo: http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/v15040999; http://hdl.handle.net/11449/249074
• topic: COVID-19; Delta variant; Gamma variant; K18-hACE2; SARS-CoV-2; variants of concern

Since December 2019, the world has been experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), and we now face the emergence of several variants. We aimed to assess the differences between the wild-type (Wt) (Wuhan) strain and the P.1 (Gamma) and Delta variants using infected K18-hACE2 mice. The clinical manifestations, behavior, virus load, pulmonary capacity, and histopathological alterations were analyzed. The P.1-infected mice showed weight loss and more severe clinical manifestations of COVID-19 than the Wt and Delta-infected mice. The respiratory capacity was reduced in the P.1-infected mice compared to the other groups. Pulmonary histological findings demonstrated that a more aggressive disease was generated by the P.1 and Delta variants compared to the Wt strain of the virus. The quantification of the SARS-CoV-2 viral copies varied greatly among the infected mice although it was higher in P.1-infected mice on the day of death. Our data revealed that K18-hACE2 mice infected with the P.1 variant develop a more severe infectious disease than those infected with the other variants, despite the significant heterogeneity among the mice.