SARS-CoV-2 infecting the inner ear results in potential hearing damage at the early stage or prognosis of COVID-19 in rodents

  1. Xia Xue
  2. Yongan Tian
  3. Mingsan Miao
  4. Jianyao Wang
  5. Wenxue Tang
  6. Yaohe Wang
  7. Jianbo Liu
  8. Hongen Xu
  9. Jinxin Miao

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Abstract

Objectives

In order to find out the association between the sensorineural hearing loss and COVID-19, we detected the expression ACE2 and TMPRSS2 in the mouse the hamster.

Design

Using the public data from NCBI and GISAID, we assessed the expression of ACE2 and TMPRSS2 at the transcriptomic, DNA, and protein levels of ACE2 in the brain, inner ear, and muscle from the golden Syrian hamster ( Mesocricetus auratus ) and mouse ( Mus musculus ).

Results

We identified ACE2 and TMPRSS2 expressed at different level in the inner ear and brain at DNA and transcriptomic levels of both mouse and the hamster. The protein expression shows a similar pattern of the brain and inner ear, while the expression of ACE2 from the inner ear was relatively higher than it from the muscle.

Conclusion

SARS-CoV-2 could infect the hearing system potentially and SSNHL could be a characteristic to detect asymptomatic patients of COVID-19.

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  1. Version published to 10.1101/2020.12.23.423942v2 on bioRxiv
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.12.23.423942: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIACUC: The procedures in this study involving animals were reviewed and approved by the Animal Experimentation Ethics Committee of the Henan University of Chinese Medicine (No. DWLL202001301).
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    The coding sequence of ACE2 and TMPRSS2 was aligned with Clustral Omega (V1.2.3) and reconstructed phylogeny, calculated distance by using MEGA v5.2.
    Clustral Omega
    suggested: None
    MEGA
    suggested: (Mega BLAST, RRID:SCR_011920)
    Cufflinks v2.2.1 with Bowtie2 (Langmead and Salzberg 2012) were used for expression analysis of transcriptomes from different tissues in humans, mice, and hamsters.
    Cufflinks
    suggested: (Cufflinks, RRID:SCR_014597)

    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 found bar graphs of continuous data. We recommend replacing bar graphs with more informative graphics, as many different datasets can lead to the same bar graph. The actual data may suggest different conclusions from the summary statistics. For more information, please see Weissgerber et al (2015).

    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.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.12.23.423942v1 on bioRxiv