Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) Causes Transient Lower Respiratory Tract Infection in Rhesus Macaques

Overview

Journal Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A

Specialty Science

Date 2013 Sep 25

PMID 24062443

Citations 208

Authors

Emmie de Wit

Angela L Rasmussen

Darryl Falzarano

Trenton Bushmaker

Friederike Feldmann

Douglas L Brining

Elizabeth R Fischer

Cynthia Martellaro

Atsushi Okumura

Jean Chang

Dana Scott

Arndt G Benecke

Michael G Katze

Heinz Feldmann

Vincent J Munster

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

In 2012, a novel betacoronavirus, designated Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus or MERS-CoV and associated with severe respiratory disease in humans, emerged in the Arabian Peninsula. To date, 108 human cases have been reported, including cases of human-to-human transmission. The availability of an animal disease model is essential for understanding pathogenesis and developing effective countermeasures. Upon a combination of intratracheal, ocular, oral, and intranasal inoculation with 7 × 10(6) 50% tissue culture infectious dose of the MERS-CoV isolate HCoV-EMC/2012, rhesus macaques developed a transient lower respiratory tract infection. Clinical signs, virus shedding, virus replication in respiratory tissues, gene expression, and cytokine and chemokine profiles peaked early in infection and decreased over time. MERS-CoV caused a multifocal, mild to marked interstitial pneumonia, with virus replication occurring mainly in alveolar pneumocytes. This tropism of MERS-CoV for the lower respiratory tract may explain the severity of the disease observed in humans and the, up to now, limited human-to-human transmission.

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