Golden Syrian hamster as a model to study cardiovascular complications associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection
- Translational Health Science and Technology Institute, India
Abstract
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV)-2 infection in the Golden Syrian hamster causes lung pathology that resembles human coronavirus disease (COVID-19). However, extra-pulmonary pathologies associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection and post COVID sequelae remain to be understood. Here we show, using a hamster model, that the early phase of SARS-CoV-2 infection leads to an acute inflammatory response and lung pathologies, while the late phase of infection causes cardiovascular complications (CVC) characterized by ventricular wall thickening associated with increased ventricular mass/ body mass ratio and interstitial coronary fibrosis. Molecular profiling further substantiated our findings of CVC, as SARS-CoV-2-infected hamsters showed elevated levels of serum cardiac Troponin-I (cTnI), cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein and long-chain fatty acid triglycerides. Serum metabolomics profiling of SARS-CoV-2-infected hamsters identified N-acetylneuraminate, a functional metabolite found to be associated with CVC, as a metabolic marker was found to be common between SARS-CoV-2-infected hamsters and COVID-19 patients. Together, we propose hamsters as a suitable animal model to study post-COVID sequelae associated with CVC which could be extended to therapeutic interventions.
Data availability
All data pertaining to the manuscript are made available in Dryad.
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Immunological and cardio-vascular pathologies associated with SARS-CoV2 infection in golden Syrian hamsters.Dryad Digital Repository, doi: 10.5061/dryad.vhhmgqnvt.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
THSTI core
- Amit Awasthi
Translational Research Program
- Amit Awasthi
DST-SERB
- Amit Awasthi
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Shiv Pillai, Ragon Institute
Ethics
Animal experimentation: This study was performed in accordance with the institutional animal ethics committee (IAEC) guidelines and all the protocols and procedures involved in the study were approved (IAEC approval number: IAEC/THSTI/94). The experimental procedures on animals were followed in strict accordance with the animal handling and usage guidelines by the IAEC and small animal facility, THSTI. Infection through intranasal route was performed under anesthesia to minimize pain.
Human subjects: Human plasma samples were collected according to the recommended guidelines of the Institutional Ethics Committee (Human Research) of THSTI and ESIC Hospital, Faridabad (Letter Ref No: THS 1.8.1/ (97) dated 07th July 2020). Human blood samples were collected from COVID-19 patients and healthy individuals after the written informed consent. Individuals were enrolled in this study based on the inclusion/exclusion criteria prescribed by the Institutional Ethics Committee (Human Research) of THSTI.
Version history
- Preprint posted: January 11, 2021 (view preprint)
- Received: September 1, 2021
- Accepted: January 7, 2022
- Accepted Manuscript published: January 11, 2022 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: January 27, 2022 (version 2)
- Version of Record updated: January 31, 2022 (version 3)
Copyright
© 2022, Rizvi et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Golden Syrian hamster as a model to study cardiovascular complications associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection
eLife 11:e73522.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.73522
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