SARS-CoV-2 infection results in lasting and systemic perturbations post recovery

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Abstract

SARS-CoV-2 has been found capable of inducing prolonged pathologies collectively referred to as Long-COVID. To better understand this biology, we compared the short- and long-term systemic responses in the golden hamster following either SARS-CoV-2 or influenza A virus (IAV) infection. While SARS-CoV-2 exceeded IAV in its capacity to cause injury to the lung and kidney, the most significant changes were observed in the olfactory bulb (OB) and olfactory epithelium (OE) where inflammation was visible beyond one month post SARS-CoV-2 infection. Despite a lack of detectable virus, OB/OE demonstrated microglial and T cell activation, proinflammatory cytokine production, and interferon responses that correlated with behavioral changes. These findings could be corroborated through sequencing of individuals who recovered from COVID-19, as sustained inflammation in OB/OE tissue remained evident months beyond disease resolution. These data highlight a molecular mechanism for persistent COVID-19 symptomology and characterize a small animal model to develop future therapeutics.

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2022.01.18.476786: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsEuthanasia Agents: Hamsters were euthanized via intraperitoneal injection of pentobarbital and cardiac perfusion with 60 mL PBS.
    IACUC: All animal experiments were performed according to protocols approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) and Institutional Biosafety Committee at ISMMS and NYUL.
    IRB: The Tissue Procurement Facility operates under Institutional Review Board (IRB) approved protocol and follows guidelines set by Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
    Consent: All autopsies have consent for research use from next of kin, and these studies were determined as exempt by IRB at Weill Cornell Medicine under those protocol numbers.
    Sex as a biological variableHamster experiments: 6–7 week-old male Golden Syrian hamsters (Mesocricetus auratus) were obtained from Charles River Laboratories.
    RandomizationHamsters were randomly assigned to the different treatment groups and all IAV and SARS-CoV-2 infections were performed in the BSL-3 facility. qRT-PCR: RNA was isolated from homogenized samples by TRIzol/phenol-chloroform extraction.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Cell Line AuthenticationContamination: All cells were tested for the presence of mycoplasma using MycoAlert Mycoplasma Detection Kit (Lonza).

    Table 2: Resources

    Antibodies
    SentencesResources
    Slides were washed once again and HRP-conjugated secondary antibody was added at a 1:5000 concentration (Goat anti-mouse: ThermoFisher, Cat #A21426; Goat anti-rabbit: Abcam, Ab6721).
    anti-rabbit
    suggested: (Abcam Cat# ab6721, RRID:AB_955447)
    anti-mouse
    suggested: (Innovative Research Cat# A21426, RRID:AB_1500929)
    Ab6721
    suggested: (Abcam Cat# ab6721, RRID:AB_955447)
    Primary antibody (MX-A: Millipore Sigma, MABF938; IBA-1: Wako, 019-19741; CD3: Dako, A0452; MPO: Dako, A0398) was added to slides at a dilution (MX-A, 1:100; IBA-1, 1:1000; CD3, 1:1000; MPO: 1:5000), and sections were incubated overnight at 4 degrees Celsius.
    CD3
    suggested: None
    Slides were washed once again and HRP-conjugated secondary antibody was added at a 1:5000 concentration (Goat anti-mouse: ThermoFisher, Cat #A21426; Goat anti-rabbit: Abcam, Ab6721).
    anti-rabbit
    suggested: (Abcam Cat# ab6721, RRID:AB_955447)
    anti-mouse
    suggested: (Innovative Research Cat# A21426, RRID:AB_1500929)
    Ab6721
    suggested: (Abcam Cat# ab6721, RRID:AB_955447)
    Experimental Models: Cell Lines
    SentencesResources
    Virus and cells: SARS-CoV-2 isolate USA-WA1/2020 was propagated in Vero-E6 cells in DMEM supplemented with 2% FBS, 1mM HEPES and 1% penicillin/streptomycin.
    Vero-E6
    suggested: None
    Influenza A virus H1N1 isolate A/California/04/2009 was propagated in MDCK cells in DMEM supplemented with 0.35% BSA.
    MDCK
    suggested: CLS Cat# 602280/p823_MDCK_(NBL-2, RRID:CVCL_0422)
    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Data visualization: All non-RNA-Seq statistical analyses, box and bar graphs, and Kaplan-Meyer plots were prepared using prism 9 as described in figure legends (GraphPad Software, San Diego, California USA;
    GraphPad
    suggested: (GraphPad Prism, RRID:SCR_002798)
    Fastq files were generated with bcl2fastq (Illumina) and aligned to the Syrian golden hamster genome (MesAur 1.0, ensembl) using the RNA-Seq Alignment application (Basespace, Illumina).
    bcl2fastq
    suggested: (bcl2fastq , RRID:SCR_015058)
    Salmon files were analyzed using the DESeq2 analysis pipeline (Love et al., 2014).
    DESeq2
    suggested: (DESeq, RRID:SCR_000154)
    All visualizations of RNA-sequencing differential expression data were created in R using ggplot2, pheatmap, ComplexHeatmap, and gplots packages.
    ComplexHeatmap
    suggested: (ComplexHeatmap, RRID:SCR_017270)
    Assessment of read coverage of viral genome was conducted using Bowtie2 and IGV_2.8.13 and visualized using ggplot2.
    Bowtie2
    suggested: (Bowtie 2, RRID:SCR_016368)
    ggplot2
    suggested: (ggplot2, RRID:SCR_014601)
    Images were morphometrically analyzed using QuPath (Bankhead et al., 2017) and ImageJ (Schneider et al., 2012).
    ImageJ
    suggested: (ImageJ, RRID:SCR_003070)
    Human Heart, Lung, Kidney RNA-sequencing: For RNA library preparation, all samples’ RNA was treated with DNAse 1 (Zymo Research, Catalog # E1010).
    Human Heart
    suggested: (Duke Human Heart Repository, RRID:SCR_013980)
    This workflow involved quality control of the reads with FastQC (Andrews), adapter trimming using Trim Galore!
    FastQC
    suggested: (FastQC, RRID:SCR_014583)
    Trim Galore
    suggested: (Trim Galore, RRID:SCR_011847)
    (https://github.com/FelixKrueger/TrimGalore), read alignment with STAR (Dobin et al., 2013), gene quantification with Salmon (Patro et al., 2017), duplicate read marking with Picard MarkDuplicates (https://github.com/broadinstitute/picard), and transcript quantification with StringTie (Kovaka et al., 2019).
    STAR
    suggested: (STAR, RRID:SCR_004463)
    StringTie
    suggested: (StringTie , RRID:SCR_016323)
    Picard
    suggested: (Picard, RRID:SCR_006525)
    Differential expression of genes was calculated by DESeq2 using FeatureCounts reads.
    FeatureCounts
    suggested: (featureCounts, RRID:SCR_012919)
    All resulting fastq files were aligned to the Homo Sapiens genome (GRCh38, RefSeq) using the RNA-Seq Alignment application (Basespace, Illumina).
    RefSeq
    suggested: (RefSeq, RRID:SCR_003496)
    Libraries were pooled and sent to the WCM Genomics Core or HudsonAlpha for final quantification by Qubit fluorometer (ThermoFisher Scientific), TapeStation 2200 (Agilent), and qRT-PCR using the Kapa Biosystems Illumina library quantification kit.
    Agilent
    suggested: (Agilent Bravo NGS, RRID:SCR_019473)
    Final libraries were quantified using fluorescent-based assays including PicoGreen (Life Technologies) or Qubit Fluorometer (Invitrogen) and Fragment Analyzer (Advanced Analytics) and sequenced on a NovaSeq 6000 sequencer (v1 chemistry) with 2×150bp targeting 60M reads per sample.
    PicoGreen
    suggested: None
    (https://github.com/FelixKrueger/TrimGalore), read alignment with STAR (Dobin et al., 2013), gene quantification with Salmon (Patro et al., 2017), duplicate read marking with Picard MarkDuplicates (https://github.com/broadinstitute/picard), and transcript quantification with StringTie (Kovaka et al., 2019).
    STAR
    suggested: (STAR, RRID:SCR_004463)
    StringTie
    suggested: (StringTie , RRID:SCR_016323)
    Picard
    suggested: (Picard, RRID:SCR_006525)
    Other quality control measures included RSeQC, Qualimap, and dupRadar.
    RSeQC
    suggested: (RSeQC, RRID:SCR_005275)
    Qualimap
    suggested: (QualiMap, RRID:SCR_001209)
    Graphic Creation: All graphics were created using BioRender and Microsoft Powerpoint.
    BioRender
    suggested: (Biorender, RRID:SCR_018361)

    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.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.


    About SciScore

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