UAQ Embryos infected and treated with CLO2
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The need for safe and effective antiviral treatments is pressing, particularly given the number of viral infections that are prevalent in animal and human populations, often causing devastating economic losses and mortality.
In the context of the current coronavirus pandemic, which has highlighted how devastating the effects of a virus can be on a naive population, it is imperative to have rigorous and unbiased data on the efficacy and safety of potential antiviral treatments, particularly those that have demonstrated virucidal effects as a disinfectant are being considered for use despite warnings about their potential toxicity, but have no empirical evidence for their antiviral effect in vivo.
Here, we test the effect of chlorine dioxide (ClO2) on chicken embryos infected with the avian infectious bronchitis (IBV) coronavirus. We determined virus-induced mortality in 10-day-old embryos inoculated with 104 average EID50 / mL from Massachusetts attenuated and IBV strains from Connecticut. We determine viral titers using RT-qPCR and perform histopathological examination of various tissues and organs.
Viral titers were 2,4 times lower and mortality was halved in infected embryos that were treated with ClO2. The infection led to the development of abnormalities regardless of treatment. Lesions typical of VIB infections were seen in all inoculated embryos, but the severity tended to be less in ClO2-treated embryos. We did not find any type of or microscopic evidence of the toxicity caused by ClO2 in the doses used here.
Our study shows that ClO2 could be a safe and viable option to control avian coronavirus, and raises the possibility that similar effects could be observed in other organisms.
bioRxiv
preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.10.13.336768. This version posted October 14, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint
(which was not certified by peer review) is the author / funder. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
