Respiratory disease in cats associated with human-to-cat transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in the UK

  1. Margaret J Hosie
  2. Ilaria Epifano
  3. Vanessa Herder
  4. Richard J Orton
  5. Andrew Stevenson
  6. Natasha Johnson
  7. Emma MacDonald
  8. Dawn Dunbar
  9. Michael McDonald
  10. Fiona Howie
  11. Bryn Tennant
  12. Darcy Herrity
  13. Ana Da Silva Filipe
  14. Daniel G Streicker
  15. Brian J Willett
  16. Pablo R Murcia
  17. Ruth F Jarrett
  18. David L Robertson
  19. William Weir
  20. the COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) consortium

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Abstract

Two cats from different COVID-19-infected households in the UK were found to be infected with SARS-CoV-2 from humans, demonstrated by immunofluorescence, in situ hybridisation, reverse transcriptase quantitative PCR and viral genome sequencing. Lung tissue collected post-mortem from cat 1 displayed pathological and histological findings consistent with viral pneumonia and tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 antigens and RNA. SARS-CoV-2 RNA was detected in an oropharyngeal swab collected from cat 2 that presented with rhinitis and conjunctivitis. High throughput sequencing of the virus from cat 2 revealed that the feline viral genome contained five single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) compared to the nearest UK human SARS-CoV-2 sequence. An analysis of cat 2’s viral genome together with nine other feline-derived SARS-CoV-2 sequences from around the world revealed no shared catspecific mutations. These findings indicate that human-to-cat transmission of SARS-CoV-2 occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK, with the infected cats developing mild or severe respiratory disease. Given the versatility of the new coronavirus, it will be important to monitor for human-to-cat, cat-to-cat and cat-to-human transmission.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.09.23.309948: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: Ethics Approval: Ethical approval for this study was granted by the University of Glasgow School of Veterinary Medicine ethics committee (EA27/20).
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Cell Line Authenticationnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Antibodies
    SentencesResources
    After sodiumcitrate pressure cooking, the rabbit anti-nucleocapsid antibody (NovusBio, code: NB100-56683SS, dilution 1:100) and an AlexaFluor-488 secondary antibody (ThermoFisher, code: A-11034) as well as the ProLong™ Gold Antifade Mountant with DAPI (ThermoFisher, code: P36935) were used.
    anti-nucleocapsid
    suggested: None
    Experimental Models: Cell Lines
    SentencesResources
    As positive controls (for immunofluorescence and in situ- hybridisation), FFPE-Vero cell pellets experimentally infected with SARS CoV-2 were used and mock infected FFPE-Vero cells served as negative controls.
    FFPE-Vero
    suggested: None
    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Reads were quality filtered with TrimGalore (https://github.com/FelixKrueger/TrimGalore), aligned to the Wuhan-Hu-1 reference strain (GenBank accession MN908947.3) using BWA (13) followed by primer trimming and consensus calling with iVar (14).
    TrimGalore
    suggested: None
    BWA
    suggested: (BWA, RRID:SCR_010910)
    A maximumlikelihood phylogenetic tree of all unique human SARS-CoV-2 sequences from the same county as cat 2 (n = 324), along with the cat 2 genome, the closest UK human sequence and the Wuhan-Hu-1 reference, was created using IQ-TREE (15) with the GTR substitution model (selected by IQ-Tree ModelFinder) and 1000 bootstraps.
    IQ-TREE
    suggested: (IQ-TREE, RRID:SCR_017254)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.09.23.309948v1 on bioRxiv