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Review
. 2020 Jun;35(3):290-304.
doi: 10.1007/s12250-020-00252-z. Epub 2020 Jun 30.

A Comprehensive Review of Animal Models for Coronaviruses: SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV

Ashutosh Singh  1 , Rahul Soloman Singh  1 , Phulen Sarma  1 , Gitika Batra  1 , Rupa Joshi  1 , Hardeep Kaur  1 , Amit Raj Sharma  1 , Ajay Prakash  1 , Bikash Medhi  2
Affiliations
Review

A Comprehensive Review of Animal Models for Coronaviruses: SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV

Ashutosh Singh et al. Virol Sin. 2020 Jun.

Abstract

The recent outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) caused by the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has already affected a large population of the world. SARS-CoV-2 belongs to the same family of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV). COVID-19 has a complex pathology involving severe acute respiratory infection, hyper-immune response, and coagulopathy. At present, there is no therapeutic drug or vaccine approved for the disease. There is an urgent need for an ideal animal model that can reflect clinical symptoms and underlying etiopathogenesis similar to COVID-19 patients which can be further used for evaluation of underlying mechanisms, potential vaccines, and therapeutic strategies. The current review provides a paramount insight into the available animal models of SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV for the management of the diseases.

Keywords: Animal model; COVID-19; Coronaviruses; MERS; SARS.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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