Risk factors that contribute to inter-individual differences in the age-of-onset of allergic diseases are poorly understood. The aim of this study was to identify genetic risk variants associated with the age at which symptoms of allergic disease first develop, considering information from asthma, hay fever and eczema. Self-reported age-of-onset information was available for 117,130 genotyped individuals of European ancestry from the UK Biobank study. For each individual, we identified the earliest age at which asthma, hay fever and/or eczema was first diagnosed and performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of this combined age-of-onset phenotype. We identified 50 variants with a significant independent association (P<310-8) with age-of-onset. Forty-five variants had comparable effects on the onset of the three individual diseases and 38 were also associated with allergic disease case-control status in an independent study (n = 222,484). We observed a strong negative genetic correlation between age-of-onset and case-control status of allergic disease (rg = -0.63, P = 4.510-61), indicating that cases with early disease onset have a greater burden of allergy risk alleles than those with late disease onset. Subsequently, a multivariate GWAS of age-of-onset and case-control status identified a further 26 associations that were missed by the univariate analyses of age-of-onset or case-control status only. Collectively, of the 76 variants identified, 18 represent novel associations for allergic disease. We identified 81 likely target genes of the 76 associated variants based on information from expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) and non-synonymous variants, of which we highlight ADAM15, FOSL2, TRIM8, BMPR2, CD200R1, PRKCQ, NOD2, SMAD4, ABCA7 and UBE2L3. Our results support the notion that early and late onset allergic disease have partly distinct genetic architectures, potentially explaining known differences in pathophysiology between individuals.

PubMed

Continued here:

Age-of-onset information helps identify 76 genetic variants associated with allergic disease. - Physician's Weekly

Professor Stefano Merigliano testing a child in Vo

A study of COVID-19 in the quarantined Italian town of V, where most of the population was tested, reveals the importance of asymptomatic cases.

The authors of the new research, from the University of Padova and at Imperial College London, publishedinNature, suggest asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic people are an important factor in the transmission of COVID-19. They also argue that widespread testing, isolating infected people, and a community lockdown effectively stopped the outbreak in its tracks.

The town of V, with a population of nearly 3,200 people, experienced Italys first COVID-19 death on 21 February 2020. The town was put into immediate quarantine for 14 days. During this time, researchers tested most of the population for infection of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, both at the start of the lockdown (86 percent tested) and after two weeks (72 percent tested).

The testing revealed that at the start of the lockdown, 2.6 percent of the population (73 people) were positive for SARS-CoV-2, while after a couple of weeks only 1.2 percent (29 people) were positive. At both times, around 40 percent of the positive cases showed no symptoms (asymptomatic). The results also show it took on average 9.3 days (range of 8-14 days) for the virus to be cleared from someones body.

None of the children under ten years old in the study tested positive for COVID-19, despite several living with infected family members. This is in contrast to adults living with infected people, who were very likely to test positive.

As a result of the mass testing any positive cases, symptomatic or not, were quarantined, slowing the spread of the disease and effectively suppressing it in only a few short weeks.

Co-lead researcher Professor Andrea Crisanti, from the Department of Molecular Medicine of the University of Padua and the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial, said: Our research shows that testing of all citizens, whether or not they have symptoms, provides a way to manage the spread of disease and prevent outbreaks getting out of hand. Despite silent and widespread transmission, the disease can be controlled.

The results of the mass testing programme in V informed policy in the wider Veneto Region, where all contacts of positive cases were offered testing. This testing and tracing approach has had a tremendous impact on the course of the epidemic in Veneto compared to other Italian regions, and serves as a model for suppressing transmission and limiting the virus substantial public health, economic and societal burden, added Professor Crisanti.

As well as identifying the proportion of asymptomatic cases, the team also found that asymptomatic people had a similar viral load the total amount of virus a person has inside them as symptomatic patients.

Viral load also appeared to decrease in people who had no symptoms to begin with but later developed symptoms, suggesting that asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic transmission could contribute significantly to the spread of disease, making testing and isolating even more important in controlling outbreaks.

Co-lead researcher Dr Ilaria Dorigatti, from the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, Jameel Institute (J-IDEA), at Imperial College London, said: The V study demonstrates that the early identification of infection clusters and the timely isolation of symptomatic as well as asymptomatic infections can suppress transmission and curb an epidemic in its early phase. This is particularly relevant today, given the current risk of new infection clusters and of a second wave of transmission.

There are still many open questions about the transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, such as the role of children and the contribution of asymptomatic carriers to transmission. Finding answers to these questions is crucial to identifying targeted and sustainable control strategies to combat the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Italy and around the world.

Professor Enrico Lavezzo, from the Department of Molecular Medicine at the University of Padua said: The result concerning asymptomatic carriers is key. We took a picture of the V population and found that about half of the population testing positive had no symptoms at the time of testing and some of them developed symptoms in the following days. This tells us that if we find a certain number of symptomatic people testing positive, we expect the same number of asymptomatic carriers that are much more difficult to identify and isolate.

The fact that the viral load is comparable between symptomatic and asymptomatic carriers means even asymptomatic infections have the potential to contribute to transmission, as some of the reconstructed chain of transmission obtained from the detailed contact tracing conducted in V confirmed.

On the one hand, it is likely that a symptomatic infection transmits large quantities of virus, for example via coughing, but it is also reasonable to think that symptoms may induce a person with a symptomatic infection to stay at home, limiting the number of contacts and hence the transmission potential. On the other hand, someone with an asymptomatic infection is entirely unconscious of carrying the virus and, according to their lifestyle and occupation, could meet a large number of people without modifying their behaviour.

More:

Whole-Town Study Reveals More Than 40% of Covid-19 Infections Had No Symptoms - Global Health News Wire

Faculty from the Wayne State University School of Medicine and Wayne State University Law School have teamed to publish a paper this month on legal and ethical issues associated with community detection of COVID-19 through wastewatermonitoring.

Professor of Physiology Jeffrey Ram, Ph.D., and Associate Professor of Law Lance Gable, Ph.D., along with Dr. Rams daughter, University of Maryland Professor of Law Natalie Ram, co-wrote Legal and Ethical Implications of Wastewater SARS-CoV-2 Monitoring for COVID-19 Surveillance, now available in the Journal for Law and Biosciences.

The paper, already a popular download, is listed on the Social Science Research Networks Top Ten download list in several categories.

Dr. Ram also is director of the Wayne State University Belle Isle Aquarium Field Research Laboratory.

Scientists have observed that molecular markers for COVID-19 can be detected in wastewater during an outbreak and, in some cases, before the first case is confirmed, they wrote. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other government entities, are considering whether to add community surveillance through wastewater monitoring to assist in tracking disease prevalence and guiding public health responses to the pandemic.

This scientific breakthrough may lead to many useful potential applications for tracking disease, intensifying testing, initiating social distancing or quarantines, and even lifting restrictions once a cessation of infection is detected and confirmed. Yet, new technologies developed in response to a public health crisis may raise difficult legal and ethical questions about how such technologies may impact both the public health and civil liberties of the population, the authors wrote. Even if reliability and efficacy are established, limits on sample and data collection, use and sharing, must also be considered to prevent undermining privacy and autonomy in order to implement these public health strategies consistent with legal and ethical considerations.

The article describes recent scientific evidence regarding COVID-19 detection in wastewater, identifying public health benefits that may result from this breakthrough, and limitations of existing data. It also assesses the legal and ethical implications of implementing policy based on positive sewage signals.

The topic of wastewater epidemiology of COVID-19 is a very new and extremely active one, Dr. Ram said. We (at Wayne State) have assembled a team that includes microbiologists, an epidemiologist, a law professor, medical students, collaborators outside of Wayne State and more.We have support from Healthy Urban Waters.

Healthy Urban Waters is a collaboration of WSU researchers networked with the community to focus on water in an urban setting and future impacts of human culture on community, the ecosystem and economic health.

Dr. Ram and Dr. Gable were invited to present at a new community interaction forum organized with COVID-313 by the WSU Office of theProvosts Social and Behavioral Determinants of Health Steering Committee. They plan additional projects together.

Natalie Ram writes about the legal and ethical uses surrounding various biotechnologies, including the use of DNA by the police. Her decision to pursue the philosophical side of science, including ethics and law, was partly inspired by her Wayne State connections.She was part of a summer science program for girls organized by Wayne State Professor Alvin Saperstein at Wayne State, and while a college student at Princeton she conducted molecular research one summer on pre-implantation genetic diagnosis at WSUs Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics.

Visit link:

Wayne Medicine and Wayne Law professors team up to explore legal and ethical issues of wastewater monitoring for COVID-19 - The South End

DUBLIN, July 1, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Rare Disease Diagnostics: Technologies and Global Markets" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global rare disease diagnostics market should reach $26.7 billion by 2024 from $17 billion in 2019, rising at a CAGR of 9.5% over the forecast period.

The scope of the report includes rare disease diagnostic technologies, applications, industries, initiatives, patents and companies. The market for rare disease diagnostic products and services is given for 2018 and 2019, and then forecast through 2024.

This report reviews the main diagnostic technologies and explains why genetic variation is important in clinical testing and disease. It then discusses significant large-scale research initiatives that impact rare disease diagnostic applications. Of particular interest is a discussion of global population-scale sequencing projects and their likely impact in linking genetic variation to rare disease diagnostics. The main market driving forces for rare disease diagnostic products and services are listed and discussed.

The report categorizes and quantifies the rare disease diagnostics market by the disease category, technology platform, test purpose, analysis target and geography segments.

More than 95 companies in the rare disease diagnostic industry are profiled in this report.

The research also provides a summary of more than 50 of the main industry acquisitions and strategic alliances that took place from April 2018 through April 2020, including key alliance trends.

The report includes:

Market Insights

Rare diseases comprise a growing public health priority, as they affect upward of 300 million people globally and they are difficult to diagnose and treat.

There is a pressing need for better ways to detect and diagnose rare diseases, as well as to provide companion diagnostics for therapy guidance, clinical trials enrollment and therapy monitoring applications.

Better diagnostic tests for rare diseases can make significant differences in the lives of those affected by these conditions. Many rare diseases go undiagnosed for long periods of time because patients, families and physicians may have limited awareness of certain diseases, and the symptoms may not be informative to healthcare workers who may not have encountered such diseases before.

Extended time to diagnosis of a rare disease, along with so-called diagnostic odysseys, can lead to negative outcomes, including misdiagnosis or disease progression. Rapid, accurate diagnostics can significantly shorten these diagnostic odysseys.

In addition to early detection and diagnostic potential, rare disease therapeutics will be important in orphan drug development and use. Orphan drugs address rare disease patient populations, and they are expected to have a high growth rate through 2024. By 2024, orphan drugs may make up as much as one-fifth of global prescription sales. Rare disease diagnostics can be used to help physicians make proper decisions regarding which therapies to use and ways to monitor the efficacy of those therapies during treatment courses. Rare disease diagnostics can also be used to help select patients for orphan drug clinical trials.

More than 70% of rare diseases are inherited conditions, and they thus have genetic components, so this industry relies heavily on genetic analysis methods, including polymerase chain reaction (PCR), next-generation sequencing (NGS) and Sanger sequencing.

Key Topics Covered

Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 2 Summary and Highlights

Chapter 3 Overview

Chapter 4 Technology Background

Chapter 5 Rare Disease Diagnostics Initiatives

Chapter 6 Rare Disease Diagnostic Industries

Chapter 7 Rare Disease Diagnostics Strategic Alliances and Acquisitions

Chapter 8 Rare Disease Diagnostics Markets

Chapter 9 Rare Disease Diagnostics Patents and Intellectual Property

Chapter 10 Company Profiles

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/rp6ok6

Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research.

Media Contact:

Research and Markets Laura Wood, Senior Manager [emailprotected]

For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900

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SOURCE Research and Markets

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Excerpt from:

Rare Disease Diagnostics Industry Anticipated to Reach $26.7 Billion by 2024 - Market Shares by Disease Class, Indication, Analysis Platform, Analysis...

While most people won't require hospitalization, it's hard to tell who will. That's why doctors recommend social distancing, even if you "feel fine."

ST. LOUIS With COVID-19 cases again on the rise in many places, health experts are once again warning of the danger that comes with asymptomatic spread: transmission of the virus from someone who isnt showing signs of infection.

That's been the Achilles heel really of this pandemic, said Dr. Jad Khoury, an infectious disease doctor at Mercy.

The CDC reports about 35% of infected people are asymptomatic, and the World Health Organization has determined about 40% of transmission may be from people who dont show signs of the virus. (The WHO has also walked-back their assessment of asymptomatic transmission as rare, after blow back and evidence from the global health community to the contrary.) Its hard for doctors to tell exactly how common this issince people who dont show symptoms usually dont get tested.

I think it's happening more so than we actually think, said Dr. Khoury.

Some experts worry asymptomatic carriers could pose the biggest public health risk in being able to get the virus under control.

The silent spread of the virus makes it all the more challenging to control, says Eric Topol, MD, professor of Molecular Medicine at Scripps Research. Their recent findings suggest asymptomatic carriers may have played a significant role in COVID-19s early spread.

As businesses reopen, even temperature checks at the door cant determine if someone contagious.

In a lot of cases fever may not be the initial or presenting symptom, said Dr. Khoury.

Sometimes a person is pre-symptomatic: they develop signs of the virus when theyve already had it for awhile.

Those are the patients that eventually developed symptoms, but they can transmit the virus before they start showing symptoms, said Dr. Khoury. And there's a debate about how soon before the symptoms show up can you transmit. Some accounts say like two to three days before you show symptoms, you can pass it on. Some say even up to six days prior to the symptom onset, that you can still have an infectious virus that you can pass on to others.

If you do show any symptoms, doctors warn: stay home. Even minor signs of the virus should be a major warning.

You're much more likely probably to get infected from somebody who is symptomatic than from somebody who is a symptomatic because they probably don't shed as much virus as a symptomatic person, he said, noting that coughs and sneezes carry more of the viral load than regular breathing does.

He adds, though, that when youre not wearing a mask or social distancing, youre also more likely to catch the virus from breathing and talking, even when no symptoms are present. The risk is definitely there.

More:

Experts warn of COVID-19 spread among people without symptoms - KSDK.com

A new study explores the interactions between airway cells and immune cells at the molecular level to identify why some people are at risk of severe COVID-19 while others are not.

There is plenty of evidence that SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus, affects individuals differently. About 80% of those who have SARS-CoV-2 experience a clinically mild version of COVID-19, meaning that they get better without needing to go to the hospital.

Risk factors for severe disease include being male, being older, and having underlying health conditions, among other factors.

What drives these risk factors is not entirely clear.

Some experts have suggested that an excessive immune reaction in response to the virus is at the heart of the damage to the lungs and other parts of the body that people with severe COVID-19 experience.

Writing in Nature Biotechnology, scientists from the Center for Digital Health at the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) and the Charit Universittsmedizin Berlin in Germany aimed to tease out the molecular actions that underpin such excessive immune reactions.

Prof. Roland Eils, chair and founding director of the Center for Digital Health, is one of the five senior study authors.

To pinpoint how different cells interact and communicate with each other, the multidisciplinary research team performed a single cell RNA sequencing analysis of upper and lower respiratory tract samples from 19 people in the hospital with COVID-19 and five volunteers without the new coronavirus.

In total, the scientists analyzed 160,528 individual cells.

Of the 19 people with COVID-19, eight had moderate disease, the authors write, while they classed 11 as critical. Two people died from the disease.

In the participants with COVID-19, the team saw a three-fold increase in gene expression of the angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) gene, which encodes the receptor that the new coronavirus uses to attach to cells during infection.

It is interesting to note that in the case of COVID-19, the signaling protein interferon, which is actually the immune systems central defense strategy against viral infections, contributes to the epithelial cells producing more ACE2 and hence becoming more vulnerable to viral infection, Prof. Irina Lehmann, head of the Molecular Epidemiology Research Group at the BIH and one of the studys senior authors, explains.

In COVID-19, the immune system thus helps the virus to infect further cells, thereby amplifying the disease, she continues.

Next, the team identified the specific subsets of epithelial and immune cells that were present in the samples and found proinflammatory cell types that may be driving cell death in the lungs.

Especially in severely ill patients, we observed that an overreactive immune system drives the destruction of the lung tissue. This might explain why these patients are more severely affected by the infection than patients in whom the immune system reacts appropriately.

Prof. Roland Eils, corresponding author

Professor Leif-Erik Sander, another of the study senior authors, also weighs in on the findings:

These results suggest that our treatments in COVID-19 patients should not only be directed against the virus itself but should also consider therapies that constrain the immune system, such as those now being used with dexamethasone, possibly even at the onset of the disease to prevent the immune system from overreacting.

Specifically, the researchers suggest that targeting the proinflammatory CCR1 and/or CCR5 pathways might suppress immune hyperactivation.

The team acknowledges that their study has some shortcomings. Due to the relatively low number of people with COVID-19 who required hospital care in Germany, the study was not large enough to look at the influences of age, sex, and underlying health conditions on the results.

The researchers were also not able to include people who had mild COVID-19 and did not require hospital care.

For live updates on the latest developments regarding the novel coronavirus and COVID-19, click here.

View post:

Why are some people at greater risk of severe COVID-19? - Medical News Today

No forced triples. No crowded common rooms. No packed lecture halls.

President Martha E. Pollacks long-awaited Tuesday announcement welcomed Cornellians back to campus, but described a Cornell that faintly resembles the one students left in March. Many say they are still thrilled to return to Ithaca in September, eager to book plane tickets and arrange car rides as soon as move-in dates are announced.

But many students were also skeptical of the reopening message, wary of what social distancing will mean in an environment built for socializing. And for some students, the promise of a restricted in-person fall semester isnt compelling enough to return to Ithaca at all.

Lillian Hong 22 was excited when she first read the email. After months of waiting for fall semester news, her days at home in Boston finally became numbered.

I assumed we were going back, she said, but it was super great to finally get that information.

As Anneliese Markus 23 opened Pollacks email Tuesday afternoon, she too was relieved to hear that she would come back to New York after spending months at her childhood home in Colorado.

But Markus said the restrictions and regulations were hard to digest, learning she will return to take-out and reservation-only dining halls, online club meetings and likely few in-person classes.

Im so desperate to go back, Markus said. I just feel like Ive regressed as a human. I want to be back on campus, but theres so much that makes me sad. The whole point of school is to be a safe space, and so many people are losing that.

It wasnt worth it

Other students are less desperate to return. Jack Sillin 22 said he decided in May that this fall, he would plan to continue online learning at home in Yarmouth, Maine.

Living in an off-campus apartment wasnt worth the money while restricted to mostly online activities, Sillin said. Not wanting to risk thousands of dollars, he decided not to sign a lease for next year, figuring all classes would continue online in the fall.

Pollacks email only solidified his decision to stay home. Sillin said he realized the fall semester would exclude some of the experiences he values most: sharing meals with friends, in-person office hours and debating with the Cornell Political Union.

All those parts of the college experience are ones I value a lot, and they wont be possible to do responsibly until theres a vaccine, Sillin said. It wasnt worth it to me to spend about $12,000 on an apartment to be doing virtual office hours, virtual clubs, [and] many of my classes virtually.

Boris Tsang / Sun Photography Editor

Starbucks on March 20, after its dine-in operations were suspended. Students will return to a Collegetown this fall that will likely feel different from the placetheyleft in March.

Some students share Sillins reasoning: As the Cornell Reddit page swelled with comments about the fall reopening plan, one incoming sophomore wrote that if the classes Im taking are largely online I dont see the point of putting myself through so many restrictions and paying for dining and housing. Others expressed frustration over tuition, which appears unlikely to budge, whether or not they return to campus.

Another student wrote that with the slew of restrictions, they would rather stay at home even though the rising senior had previously marked on a survey that they would live in Ithaca if the semester were held online. Now, the student would happily change their response.

But factors beyond money and a seven-hour drive to Ithaca are pushing Sillin to remain home this fall. After mulling Pollacks email and reading the 97-page report, Sillin said he is skeptical students will change their behavior to comply with social distancing measures, even as administrators urge them to resist large gatherings.

The current reopening plan relies heavily on voluntary student compliance. According to Sillin, education campaigns and agreement signatures have an uninspiring track record, historically failing to prevent risky behavior such as underage alcohol use.

Why am I supposed to think that when we try those same tactics in this situation, all of a sudden were going to have compliance from everyone? Sillin said. It really only takes one frat party for all of these measures to be rendered moot. The bar is really high for changing behavior.

Sillin isnt the only student questioning whether their peers will radically adapt their behavior. Even the student-run McGraw Tower Instagram account @bingaleedingalee called on students currently partying in Ithaca to wear masks and respect social distancing, writing in a Tuesday post: Realize how your actions put cornell employees, immunocompromised folk, your peers at cornell who might not have the same access to masks that you might have, faculty, and families in ithaca, at risk!

Modeling the fall semester

Prof. Peter Fraziers model which became the basis for the Universitys reopening decision says a residential semester that includes a virus screening program will better protect the public health of the community than a semester held completely online.

But Jeff Pea grad, a Ph.D. student in cellular and molecular medicine who sat on a reopening committee, worries that Cornell placed too much weight on a model a predictive framework that relies heavily on assumptions to explain why they decided to welcome students back to campus.

He said the model attempts at [predicting] a lot of things well in trying to grasp what campus would look like in the fall. But with so much uncertainty, he said he doesnt fully agree with the conclusion that a residential semester is safer than keeping campus closed.

No model is perfect, Pea said. I think it shouldnt be what were putting all our weight into. Theres a real concern for students coming back.

Boris Tsang / Sun Photography Editor

The exodus of thousands of students in March left Cornells typically bustling campus nearly abandoned. With strict social distancing guidelines planned for the Universitys reopening, it remains to be seen what the new normal will look like.

Pea added that Pollacks reopening announcement was only a starting point for ongoing conversations about campus health and safety, with information gaps to fill, particularly within the graduate student community.

In a Sun letter to the editor, Pea, Rebecca Harrison 14 grad and Arielle Johnson grad called on Cornell to give all graduate students the option to workremotely without needing to go through medical accommodations or provide documentation. The current recommended policy asks graduate students to apply for remote work through Cornell Student Disability Services or their supervisor.

I share many other graduate students concerns about the absence of attention to our health and safety in President Pollacks reopening announcement, Harrison told The Sun in an email on Tuesday. Graduate student labor is critical for keeping the gears of undergraduate education at Cornell running, but this should not be at the expense of our own needs to be comfortable returning to our classrooms.

Nothing is clear

Pollacks email also left many undergraduates eager for more information. How will students physically distance while walking between classes? How will bathrooms operate? How will Cornell monitor travel away from campus?

For Markus, the reopening message left questions about everything from pre-enrollment dates to library policies.

Its all so obscure, whats going on behind the scenes, Markus said. Nothing is clear. I still dont really know what their plan is. I have no sense of what is going to go on next semester.

Even as the email left students with more questions than answers, many also said they see the value of reopening campus, particularly for those without access to a computer or a safe learning environment at home.

Sillin called reopening campus necessary for many students without quiet home study spaces and internet connection, even as he worries those who suffered the most during the remote spring 2020 semester could again face the brunt of a potential second campus shutdown.

Despite so many unknowns, students who are able to return know one thing: Theyre grateful to be heading back to campus, even if it wont feel the same.

Im absolutely just going to be glad to be back on campus, Hong said. Leaving was very emotional. It made a lot of us realize how much the college experience means to us, and its a short four years. Having any of that back in any capacity is better than nothing.

Hongs off-campus apartment lease has already started, but more than that, she said she is looking forward to building physical models with CUAir, her project team, and reuniting with her friends.

When she gets back to campus, she first plans to buy a tub of Big Red Bear Tracks.

Read more:

Are Students Excited to Return to Campus This Fall? It Depends Who You Ask - Cornell University The Cornell Daily Sun

At a time when most of us had still not even thought about panic-buying toilet paper, Andreas Lengeling was stocking up on boxes of hay and aspen wood bedding, food pellets and veterinary drugs. He did not want to rely on external suppliers for the following three months. It was the end of February, and he was bracing himself for the coronavirus pandemic to hit Germany.

As the animal research and welfare officer at the Max Planck Society, Lengeling's main responsibility is to ensure that the 65 species of animals housed across its research institutes in Germany and abroad are well cared for. These include insects, rodents, fishes, clawed frogs, song birds and larger vertebrates like alpacas.

In March, US-based researchers gave accounts of how lockdowns and stay-in-place orders made it difficult to take care of lab animals. Thousands of mice have been culled. This is partly due to staff shortages as older and vulnerable people resort to working from home. Most experiments have also ground to a halt. A researcher in Colombia even carried 100 turtle eggs to her house to protect them.

Quick action and teamwork

"I'm absolutely concerned about these reports," says Lengeling. "It's really heartbreaking to hear."

Read more:Germany's CureVac to launch human trial of experimental coronavirus vaccine

Scientist and Animal Welfare Officer at Max Planck Society, Andreas Lengeling

But he reports that the situation has not been as dire in Germany.

"We reacted really early," says Lengeling. "At the end of February, we were already adapting our emergency plans to the pandemic scenario. We were really well-prepared."

Other institutes took early note as well. At the German Research Center for Environmental Health (HMGU) in Munich, where scientists work with rodents and fish, all new experiments were put on hold. Animals were, however, saved because of excellent cooperation between animal caretakers, scientists, animal welfare officers and the crisis management team, according to Johannes Beckers, an HMGU research group leader.

But not every institute in Germany acted in time to rescue test animals. The Max Delbrck Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) in Berlin reported that 1,500 young mice and rats were euthanized as a consequence of the disruption caused by the pandemic. This is because most mice and rats used in experiments have to be at a specific age depending on what is being researched. These particular animals were too young to be used in experiments and will be too old by the time experiments resume.

Read more:Worldwide, researchers work on a coronavirus vaccine

Three zebrafish as imaged by Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tbingen

The MDC's press officer, Jutta Kramm, says that staff have, however, remained dedicated to maintaining the welfare of animals within their facility. "All suitable employees work in shifts to provide food and water to the animals and to clean the cages," she says.

The German Cancer Research Center has had to reduce the number of rodents in its care, too. But its response to DW's query on how many animals this might have involved is pending.

Experiments halted, projects delayed

The pandemic has posed a particularly difficult challenge to research labs that work with non-human primates such as rhesus macaques and marmosets. That is because there is a risk of humans transmitting a SARS-CoV-2 infection to monkeys in a so-called cross-infection.

This threat has had a large impact on researcher Sabine Borchert's life. As a technical assistant at the German Primate Center in Gttingen, Borchert typically spends several hours each day training macaque monkeys for experiments. She needs to learn what each monkey likes and dislikes eating, how each of them react to different situations and when changes in their behavior begin to signal stress. "When you walk into the department, you don't know what will happen that day," she says. "It's like having children."

But during the pandemic, scientists and assistants have split into mixed groups of two that work alternate weeks, minimizing contact among themselves and with the animals. This means Borchert sees far less of Ralph, Millhouse and Barney.

In the lab, led by Hansjrg Scherberger, monkeys learn to grasp objects of different shapes and sizes so that researchers can decode how the brain controls movements of the hands and fingers. Many monkeys have taken months and even years to learn these tasks. If they now spend an extensive period without practice, it is hard to say how long they will retain the abilities they have learned.

"I think they won't forget everything. But it will take weeks to get their performance back up again," says Borchert. This does mean, however, that doctoral and postdoctoral projects will be delayed by weeks or months.

Animals susceptible to SARS-CoV-2

Finding out which species of animals face the risk of getting infected by SARS-CoV-2 is, in its turn, the job of Andreas Lengeling in Munich. He digs through old literature on coronaviruses and sets up alerts on PubMed to track the release of new research papers. He shares his findings with veterinarians across the many Max Planck institutes to drive decisions.

Read more:Tiger tests positive for coronavirus at New York zoo

A rhesus macaque is learning to grasp objects of different shapes and sizes at German Primate Centre (DPZ) in Gttingen.

"Luckily, it looks like most of the animal species cannot be infected by the [new] coronavirus," says Lengeling. "But there are a few exceptions." Cats, hamsters, ferrets, minks and non-human primates can get sick. In macaque monkeys, the illness presents as mild, cold-like symptoms. Other animals, as of now, appear to be resistant to any natural transmission of SARS-CoV-2.

A recent study by Sinovac Biotech, a private Beijing-based company currently racing to develop the first coronavirus vaccine, showed that its vaccinecontaining an inactivated form of the virusmakes macaque monkeys immune to a second infection. But this finding must be taken with a pinch of salt: As symptoms of COVID-19 in humans are far more damaging and severe, the animal and human systems are not necessarily comparable.

Animal testing for COVID-19

These tests of COVID-19 vaccines on animals and the news that many lab rats have been culled has fueled an old and ongoing debate. Those who do not support animal testing to gain scientific knowledge and say the cruelty it entails outweighs its benefits have initiated online petitions and started threads on Reddit.

But Ulrich Kalinke, a professor at the Institute for Experimental Infection Research in Hanover, makes a clear case for continuing animal testing. He says that developing a vaccine without an infection model is not only dangerous, but difficult.

"I feel tremendous pressure," says Kalinke. "We need a vaccine. But if you try to address those questions only in humans, without putting humans in danger, you would have to start with very, very low dosages of vaccine. This would take ages."

And time is of the essence in this fight against the novel coronavirus.

Vaccines: Sometimes a two-edged sword

In the past, there has been no dearth of examples where the use of new vaccines has gone wrong. In 1966, a clinical trial of a vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus in the US met a disastrous end when it resulted in the death of two infants. More recently, an oral vaccine for polio, given widely to low and middle-income families across the world, was discovered to have caused many cases of the disease instead.

Read more:What is the future of animal testing?

Scientist and professor Ulrich Kalinke from Institute for Experimental Infection Research in Hannover is heading project TWINCORE for coronavirus-related research

Ulrich Kalinkesays that the scientific community has learned from such failures. He also wants to avoid a scenario where one individual out of every 1,000 vaccinated comes down with severe side effects, when prior testing in animals can prevent this from happening.

In the project TWINCORE, he is leading the development of a mouse model of COVID-19 that will show the same pathology of the disease as seen in humans. The idea is to then inject vaccines and test what kind of immunity is created throughout the bodies of mice.

Ulrich Kalinke said the mass inoculation needed to curb the coronavirus pandemic across the globe means that safety concerns are paramount: "We are speculating that there will be the need to vaccinate maybe one or two-thirds of the whole world population. So we had better know that the vaccine is safe."

Researchers at the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute in China have found that the novel coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, can be transmitted between cats. Domesticated house cats are also able to pass the virus on to members of their species, but not very easily, said Hualan Chen, a lead researcher of the - not peer reviewed -paper which was published in "bioRxiv" on March 31.

But cat owners shouldn't panic. Felines quickly form antibodies to the virus, so they aren't contagious for very long. Domestic cat owners with preexisting medical conditions, or the elderly, should temporarily restrict where their cats are able to wander. Healthy people should wash their hands thoroughly after patting them.

Unlike cats, the virus is unable to replicate easily in dogs, the researchers report. So you're all clear when it comes to walking or training your pooch.

This domesticated pig out walking the streets of Rome doesn't need to be afraid of any dogs. And, the dog needn't be afraid of its grunting opponent, either. Pigs aren't considered a natural reservoir for the coronavirus, the veterinarians discovered.

Things are different for the members of the Mustelidae family. Hualan Chen also researched ferrets, and found that SARS-CoV-2 is able to reproduce in these animals, just as in cats. The transmission between the animals occurs through respiratory droplets. Researchers found the virus on swabs taken from the throat and nose of ferrets and cats, but were unable to detect any lung infections.

Experts have given the all-clear for people who handle poultry, such as this trader in Wuhan, China, where scientists believe the first case of the virus emerged late last year. Humans have nothing to worry about, as chickens are practically immune to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, as are ducks and other bird species.

People can be infected by animals, but the same can also happen in reverse. Four-year-old Malayan tiger Nadia tested positive for COVID-19 recently at the Bronx Zoo in New York. "It's the first time, to our knowledge, that a [wild] animal has gotten sick from COVID-19 from a person," Paul Calle, the zoo's chief veterinarian, told "National Geographic" magazine.

Bats are considered the most-likely carrier of SARS-CoV-2, but veterinarians believe that in December 2019, another species must have existed in Wuhan as an intermediate host between them and humans. Could it have been ferrets or cats?

Pangolins are also under suspicion for transmitting the virus. Researchers from Hong Kong, China and Australia have detected a virus in a Malaysian Pangolin that shows stunning similarities to SARS-CoV-2.

Author: Fabian Schmidt

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How lab animals have fared in the coronavirus crisis - DW (English)