{"id":4743,"date":"2023-09-26T20:23:54","date_gmt":"2023-09-27T01:23:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=4743"},"modified":"2023-09-26T20:31:57","modified_gmt":"2023-09-27T01:31:57","slug":"contagious-omicron-strain-replicates-early-in-infection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2023\/09\/26\/contagious-omicron-strain-replicates-early-in-infection\/","title":{"rendered":"Contagious omicron strain replicates early in infection"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/news.cornell.edu\/stories\/2023\/09\/contagious-omicron-strain-replicates-early-infection\">Cornell Chronicle<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has produced a number of variants, including alpha, beta, delta and omicron, each with its own subvariants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>New research, published Sept. 22 in Science Advances, used engineered mice to compare SARS-COV-2 omicron subvariants, and found one of them, BA.5, was more virulent likely due to its ability to rapidly replicate early during infection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The study addresses a challenge to studying and understanding rapidly evolving variants of concern due to a lack of animal models for running tests that could help explain why variants and subvariants each behave differently in people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The genetically modified mice, called K18-hACE2 mice, used in the research express a human receptor that allowed SARS-COV-2 to enter otherwise inaccessible mouse cells.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cOne of the things we found is that the strain that causes more pathology, BA.5, replicates much faster early on during infection,\u201d said&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.augustlab.com\/\">Avery August<\/a>, deputy provost and professor of microbiology and immunology in the College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM). August and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/sites.google.com\/view\/aguilarlab\/home\">Hector Aguilar-Carre\u00f1o<\/a>, professor of virology, also in CVM, are co-corresponding authors of the study, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/full\/10.1126\/sciadv.adj1736\">Age-Dependent Acquisition of Pathogenicity by SARS-CoV-2 Omicron BA.5<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cBy doing that, the virus generates a really strong immune response, which then leads to increased pathology and symptoms compared to subvariants that don\u2019t replicate as fast,\u201d August said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cPrior to this study, there were no small animal models to study the new SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variants of concern, because no animals got sick with other variants,\u201d Aguilar-Carre\u00f1o said. &nbsp;\u201cOur study allows us to use relatively older K18-hACE2 mice as a disease model to understand how the virus becomes pathogenic, and to test whether and how vaccines and antivirals work for the new Omicron sub-variants.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Early omicron BA.1 and BA.2 subvariants also replicated and spread in the K-18 mice, but they caused minimal illness and death. On the other hand, BA.5-infected mice exhibited significant weight loss, high pathology in lungs, high levels of inflammatory cells and cytokines, signaling proteins that are associated with inflammation. While some 3-month old mice survived and all 5 to 8 month-old BA.5-infected mice died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/news.cornell.edu\/stories\/2023\/09\/contagious-omicron-strain-replicates-early-infection\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cornell Chronicle Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has produced a number of variants, including alpha, beta, delta and omicron, each with its own subvariants. New research, published Sept. 22 in Science Advances, used engineered mice to compare SARS-COV-2 omicron subvariants, and found one of them, BA.5, was more [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-clinical-considerations"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4743"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4744,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4743\/revisions\/4744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}