While the seroprevalence of SARS-CoV-2 in healthy people does not differ significantly among age groups, those aged 65 years or older exhibit strikingly higher COVID-19 mortality compared to younger individuals. To further understand differing COVID-19 manifestations in patients of different ages, three age groups of ferrets are infected with SARS-CoV-2. Although SARS-CoV-2 is isolated from all ferrets regardless of age, aged ferrets (≥3 years old) show higher viral loads, longer nasal virus shedding, and more severe lung inflammatory cell infiltration, and clinical symptoms compared to juvenile (≤6 months) and young adult (1–2 years) groups. Furthermore, direct contact ferrets co-housed with the virus-infected aged group shed more virus than direct-contact ferrets co-housed with virus-infected juvenile or young adult ferrets. Transcriptome analysis of aged ferret lungs reveals strong enrichment of gene sets related to type I interferon, activated T cells, and M1 macrophage responses, mimicking the gene expression profile of severe COVID-19 patients. Thus, SARS-CoV-2-infected aged ferrets highly recapitulate COVID-19 patients with severe symptoms and are useful for understanding age-associated infection, transmission, and pathogenesis of SARS-CoV-2. Here, Kim et al. characterize SARS-CoV-2 infection in juvenile, young, and old aged ferrets to provide a further understanding of differences in COVID-19 severity in humans at different ages. Aged ferrets have higher viral loads, shed virus longer, and mimic the transcriptomic profile of severely infected patients.
【저자키워드】 SARS-CoV-2, Viral host response, Viral transmission, 【초록키워드】 COVID-19, Transcriptome, Macrophage, Pathogenesis, Clinical symptoms, T cells, SARS-COV-2 infection, Seroprevalence, Human, Infection, COVID-19 severity, interferon, lung, Transmission, nasal, virus, type I interferon, ferret, Patient, age, group, transcriptomic profile, transcriptome analysis, COVID-19 patients, COVID-19 mortality, Contact, COVID-19 patient, manifestation, direct contact, inflammatory cell, Older, clinical symptom, viral loads, severe symptoms, severe COVID-19 patients, ferrets, activated T cells, gene expression profile, severely infected patients, macrophage responses, while, pathogenesis of SARS-CoV-2, inflammatory cell infiltration, not differ, significantly, healthy, individuals, reveal, groups, severe symptom, mimicking, infected with SARS-CoV-2, 【제목키워드】 Characteristics, ferret, pathogenic,