Abstract

Doc number: 170

Abstract

Background: Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection continues to be an escalating global health problem. Feasible and effective animal models for HBV infection are the prerequisite for developing novel therapies for this disease. The tree shrew (Tupaia ) is a small animal species evolutionary closely related to humans, and thus is permissive to certain human viral pathogens. Whether tree shrews could be chronically infected with HBV in vivo has been controversial for decades. Most published research has been reported on adult tree shrews, and only small numbers of HBV infected newborn tree shrews had been observed over short time periods. We investigated susceptibility of newborn tree shrews to experimental HBV infection as well as viral clearance over a protracted time period.

Results: Forty-six newborn tree shrews were inoculated with the sera from HBV-infected patients or tree shrews. Serum and liver samples of the inoculated animals were periodically collected and analyzed using fluorescence quantitative polymerase chain reaction, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, Southern blot, and immunohistochemistry. Six tree shrews were confirmed and four were suspected as chronically HBV-infected for more than 48 (up to 228) weeks after inoculation, including three that had been inoculated with serum from a confirmed HBV-infected tree shrew.

Conclusions: Outbred neonatal tree shrews can be long-term chronically infected with HBV at a frequency comparable to humans. The model resembles human disease where also a smaller proportion of infected individuals develop chronic HBV related disease. This model might enable genetic and immunologic investigations which would allow determination of underlying molecular causes favoring susceptibility for chronic HBV infection and disease establishment vs. viral clearance.

Details

Title
Experimental chronic hepatitis B infection of neonatal tree shrews (Tupaia belangeri chinensis ): A model to study molecular causes for susceptibility and disease progression to chronic hepatitis in humans
Author
Wang, Qi; Schwarzenberger, Paul; Yang, Fang; Zhang, Jingjing; Su, Jianjia; Yang, Chun; Cao, Ji; Ou, Chao; Liang, Liang; Shi, Junlin; Wang, Duoping; Wang, Jia; Wang, Xiaojuan; Ruan, Ping; Li, Yuan
Pages
170
Publication year
2012
Publication date
2012
Publisher
BioMed Central
ISSN
1743-422X
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
1220682501
Copyright
© 2012 Wang et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.