Acute Respiratory Distress in Aged, SARS-CoV-2-Infected African Green Monkeys but Not Rhesus Macaques.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) induces a wide range of disease severity, ranging from asymptomatic infection to a life-threating illness, particularly in the elderly population and individuals with comorbid conditions. Among individuals with serious coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) disease, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is a common and often fatal presentation. Animal models of SARS-CoV-2 infection that manifest severe disease are needed to investigate the pathogenesis of COVID-19-induced ARDS and evaluate therapeutic strategies. We report two cases of ARDS in two aged African green monkeys (AGMs) infected with SARS-CoV-2 that had pathological lesions and disease similar to severe COVID-19 in humans. We also report a comparatively mild COVID-19 phenotype characterized by minor clinical, radiographic, and histopathologic changes in the two surviving, aged AGMs and four rhesus macaques (RMs) infected with SARS-CoV-2. Notable increases in circulating cytokines were observed in three of four infected, aged AGMs but not in infected RMs. All the AGMs had increased levels of plasma IL-6 compared with baseline, a predictive marker and presumptive therapeutic target in humans infected with SARS-CoV-2. Together, our results indicate that both RMs and AGMs are capable of modeling SARS-CoV-2 infection and suggest that aged AGMs may be useful for modeling severe disease manifestations, including ARDS. Copyright © 2021 American Society for Investigative Pathology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Citation

Robert V Blair, Monica Vaccari, Lara A Doyle-Meyers, Chad J Roy, Kasi Russell-Lodrigue, Marissa Fahlberg, Chris J Monjure, Brandon Beddingfield, Kenneth S Plante, Jessica A Plante, Scott C Weaver, Xuebin Qin, Cecily C Midkiff, Gabrielle Lehmicke, Nadia Golden, Breanna Threeton, Toni Penney, Carolina Allers, Mary B Barnes, Melissa Pattison, Prasun K Datta, Nicholas J Maness, Angela Birnbaum, Tracy Fischer, Rudolf P Bohm, Jay Rappaport. Acute Respiratory Distress in Aged, SARS-CoV-2-Infected African Green Monkeys but Not Rhesus Macaques. The American journal of pathology. 2021 Feb;191(2):274-282

Mesh Tags

Substances

PMID: 33171111

search → result