Immunocompetent mouse model for Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus
- NIAID/NIH, United States
- Texas Veterinary Pathology, United States
Abstract
Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) is a severe tick-borne febrile illness with wide geographic distribution. CCHF is caused by infection with the Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus (CCHFV) and case fatality rates can be as high as 30%. Despite causing severe disease in humans, our understanding of the host and viral determinants of CCHFV pathogenesis are limited. A major limitation in the investigation of CCHF has been the lack of suitable small animal models. Wild-type mice are resistant to clinical isolates of CCHFV and consequently, mice must be deficient in type I interferon responses to study the more severe aspects of CCHFV. We report here a mouse-adapted variant of CCHFV that recapitulates in adult, immunocompetent mice the severe CCHF observed in humans. This mouse-adapted variant of CCHFV significantly improves our ability to study host and viral determinants of CCHFV-induced disease in a highly tractable mouse model.
Data availability
Relevant source data for figures is provided and the consensus sequence of MA-CCHFV has been deposited to Genbank (Accession #s MW058028 - MW058030)
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Department of Intramural Research, NIH
- David W Hawman
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: Animal experiments were approved by the institutional animal care and use committee, protocol #s 2017-68 and 2019-63. Studies performed by experienced personnel under veterinary oversight. Mice were group-housed in HEPA-filtered cage systems and acclimatized to BSL4 conditions prior to start of the experiment. They were provided with nesting material and food and water ad libitum.
Copyright
This is an open-access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.
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Immunocompetent mouse model for Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus
eLife 10:e63906.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.63906
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