The B.1.427/1.429 (epsilon) SARS-CoV-2 variants are more virulent than ancestral B.1 (614G) in Syrian hamsters.
Timothy CarrollDouglas M FoxNeeltje van DoremalenErin E BallMary Kate MorrisAlicia Sotomayor-GonzalezVenice ServellitaArjun RustagiClaude Kwe YindaLinda FrittsJulia Rebecca PortZhong-Min MaMyndi G HolbrookJonathan SchulzCatherine A BlishCarl HansonCharles Y ChiuVincent MunsterSarah A StanleyChristopher J MillerPublished in: bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology (2021)
In the last 12 months new variants of SARS-CoV-2 have arisen in the UK, South Africa, Brazil, India, and California. New SARS-CoV-2 variants will continue to emerge for the foreseeable future in the human population and the potential for these new variants to produce severe disease and evade vaccines needs to be understood. In this study, we used the hamster model to determine the epsilon (B.1.427/429) SARS-CoV-2 strains that emerged in California in late 2020 cause more severe disease and infected hamsters have higher viral loads in the upper respiratory tract compared to the prior B.1 (614G) strain. These findings are consistent with human clinical data and help explain the emergence and rapid spread of this strain in early 2021.
Keyphrases
- sars cov
- copy number
- respiratory syndrome coronavirus
- endothelial cells
- respiratory tract
- south africa
- induced pluripotent stem cells
- pluripotent stem cells
- gene expression
- climate change
- genome wide
- big data
- hiv positive
- human health
- human immunodeficiency virus
- loop mediated isothermal amplification
- data analysis