Gender associates with both susceptibility to infection and pathogenesis of SARS-CoV-2 in Syrian hamster

新冠病毒的暴发流行给全球公共卫生带来严重威胁，迄今已导致超过1.5亿人感染和300万人死亡。大量的临床数据已显示，性别是影响新冠肺炎预后的重要因素之一，男性感染新冠病毒后的重症率和死亡率显著高于女性。因此，探索性别因素对新冠病毒感染和重症化的影响以及不同性别宿主的免疫应答模式，对于指导新冠病毒的临床治疗、开发特异性抗病毒药物和抗炎症药物具有重要意义。 厦门大学夏宁邵教授团队联合香港大学管轶教授团队系统分析了新冠病毒SARS-CoV-2对叙利亚金黄地鼠的易感性与致病性，发现病毒对地鼠的致病性具有较明显的性别差异，雄性地鼠相比雌性地鼠在感染后可表现出更为严重的疾病生理学特征和肺部病理学改变，可为进一步开展新冠致病机制与性别因素相关研究提供模型支持。 厦门大学博士后袁伦志、博士生马建、硕士生周明和香港大学朱华晨教授、陈日荣工程师为共同第一作者，厦门大学夏宁邵教授、程通教授和香港大学管轶教授为共同通讯作者。【Abstract】Epidemiological studies of the COVID-19 patients have suggested the male bias in outcomes of lung illness. To experimentally demonstrate the epidemiological results, we performed animal studies to infect male and female Syrian hamsters with SARS-CoV2. Remarkably, high viral titer in nasal washings was detectable in male hamsters who presented symptoms of weight loss,weakness, piloerection, hunched back and abdominal respiration, as well as severe pneumonia, pulmonary edema, consolidation,and fibrosis. In contrast with the males, the female hamsters showed much lower shedding viral titers, moderate symptoms, and relatively mild lung pathogenesis. The obvious differences in the susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 and severity of lung pathogenesis between male and female hamsters provided experimental evidence that SARS-CoV-2 infection and the severity of COVID-19 are associated with gender.This work was supported by grants from the National Science and Technology Major Project of Infectious Diseases (No. 2017ZX10304402-002-003), the National Science and Technology Major Projects for Major New Drugs Innovation and Development (No. 2018ZX09711003-005-003), the Science and Technology Project of Fujian Province (2020YZ014001), the Science and Technology Project of Xiamen City (3502Z2020YJ01), and the CAMS Innovation Fund for Medical Sciences (No. 2019RU022). 该研究同时得到香港大学陈鸿霖教授、美国霍华德大学唐七义教授的指导，获得传染病防治国家科技重大专项、新药创制国家科技重大专项、福建省应急科技攻关项目和厦门应急科技攻关等项目的资助