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Severe acute respiratory disease in American mink (Neovison vison) experimentally infected with SARS-CoV-2

Adney, D. R.; Lovaglio, J.; Schulz, J. E.; Yinda, C. K.; Avanzato, V. A.; Haddock, E.; Port, J. R.; Holbrook, M.; Hanley, P. W.; Saturday, G.; Scott, D.; Spengler, J. R.; Tansey, C.; Cossaboom, C.; Wendling, N.; Martens, C.; Easley, J.; Yap, S. W.; Seifert, S. N.; Munster, V. J.

2022-01-24 microbiology
10.1101/2022.01.20.477164 bioRxiv
Show abstract

An animal model that fully recapitulates severe COVID-19 presentation in humans has been a top priority since the discovery of SARS-CoV-2 in 2019. Although multiple animal models are available for mild to moderate clinical disease, a non-transgenic model that develops severe acute respiratory disease has not been described. Mink experimentally infected with SARS-CoV-2 developed severe acute respiratory disease, as evident by clinical respiratory disease, radiological, and histological changes. Virus was detected in nasal, oral, rectal, and fur swabs. Deep sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 from oral swabs and lung tissue samples showed repeated enrichment for a mutation in the gene encoding for nonstructural protein 6 in open reading frame 1a/1ab. Together, these data indicate that American mink develop clinical features characteristic of severe COVID19 and as such, are uniquely suited to test viral countermeasures. One Sentence SummarySARS-CoV-2 infected mink develop severe respiratory disease that recapitulates some components of severe acute respiratory disease, including ARDS.

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