Volume 27, Number 12—December 2021
Research Letter
Postmortem Stability of SARS-CoV-2 in Mouse Lung Tissue
Sophie A. Valkenburg, Samuel M.S. Cheng, Asmaa Hachim, Malik Peiris, and John Nicholls
Table
Postmortem viral loads in K18-hACE2 mice lung tissue after 5 days of infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2*
| Day | N gene copies, log10 | % Reduction of N gene copies† | TCID50/mL, log10 | % Reduction of TCID50/mL† | Lung inflammation score‡ |
SARS-CoV-2 N protein antigen score§ |
Positive for SARS N protein¶ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 7.28 + 0.53 | NA | 5.48 + 0.44 | NA | 9.33 + 1.53 | 3.66 + 1.15 | 3 (100.0) |
| 1 | 6.39 + 1.59 | −48.85 + 48.14 | 4.54 + 1.48 | −50.88 + 58.82 | 7 + 2 | 2.66 + 2.31 | 2 (66.6) |
| 5# | 7.05 + 0.36 | −48.21 + 45.43 | 4.00 + 0.41 | −96.48 + 3.54 | 5.33 + 4.61 | 4 + 1.4 | 2 (100.0) |
| 14 | 5.53 + 1.43 | −82.95 + 29.13 | 2.78 + 1.21 | −99.35 + 0.86 | 10.33 + 1.53 | 1.66 + 2.88 | 1 (33.3) |
*Values are mean +SD, except as indicated. NA, not applicable; TCID50, 50% tissue culture infectious dose. †Compared with day 0. ‡Scale of 0–16, in which 16 represents most severe inflammation. §Scale of 0–5, in which 5 represents highest amount of antigen. ¶Values are no. (%). #Days 0,1, and 14 values reflect 3 mice. Day 5 values reflect 2 mice for histology and 3 mice for TCID50 and reverse transcription PCR.
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Page updated: November 19, 2021
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