06/10/2020
MARBURG VIRUS CONTINUED
By: Offixial Romeo
INTRODUCTION CONTINUED
The 2013–2016 EBOV epidemic in West Africa highlighted the significant threat that filovirus outbreaks pose to international public health, yet despite the potential for MARV to cause serious outbreaks1,3,4, there are still no medically licensed vaccines or therapeutics to treat MHF. The development of such countermeasures requires relevant and well-characterized animal models that closely recapitulate the disease observed in humans. NHPs, particularly macaques, are considered the “gold-standard” model for MHF since they closely reflect human disease13,14. However, due to ethical and practical concerns, the use of NHPs is typically limited to the final evaluation of preclinical vaccine and therapeutic trials. Rodents therefore represent an important model system for initial evaluation of preventative and post-exposure countermeasures, and while several rodent MHF models have been developed, none of them recapitulates the disease as completely as it is observed in humans and NHPs14. In particular, the mouse models demonstrate only limited or inconsistent coagulation abnormalities, and neither the mouse nor the guinea pig models exhibit the full range of hemorrhagic manifestations, including the characteristic petechial rash7,15,16.
We used Syrian golden hamsters, which are widely used as animal models for infectious diseases17,18, to produce a rodent model that more precisely reflects MARV infection in humans and NHPs. Using hamster-adapted (HA) MARV-Angola, we performed a detailed pathological analysis of infection over time. Not only did HA-MARV infection of hamsters reproduce nearly all of the clinical features of MHF observed in humans and NHPs, including severe hematological and coagulation abnormalities, but it also reproduced hemorrhagic manifestations and the characteristic rash, which has never before been observed in any other The 2013–2016 EB model.