{"doi":"10.3389/fcvm.2023.1266276","title":"Endothelial SARS-CoV-2 infection is not the underlying cause of COVID-19-associated vascular pathology in mice","abstract":"Endothelial damage and vascular pathology have been recognized as major features of COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. Two main theories regarding how severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) damages endothelial cells and causes vascular pathology have been proposed: direct viral infection of endothelial cells or indirect damage mediated by circulating inflammatory molecules and immune mechanisms. However, these proposed mechanisms remain largely untested in vivo . In the present study, we utilized a set of new mouse genetic tools developed in our lab to test both the necessity and sufficiency of endothelial human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (hACE2) in COVID-19 pathogenesis. Our results demonstrate that endothelial ACE2 and direct infection of vascular endothelial cells do not contribute significantly to the diverse vascular pathology associated with COVID-19.","journal":"Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine","year":2023,"id":373512,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":5,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9566,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":337375,"name":"Alan T. Tang","orcid":"0000-0003-1422-0349","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1134820,"name":"Min Wang","orcid":"0000-0001-7703-3482","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":313872,"name":"David W. Buchholz","orcid":"0000-0001-8874-6648","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":805724,"name":"Brian Imbiakha","orcid":"0000-0001-8538-5445","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":354966,"name":"Jisheng Yang","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":160805,"name":"Xiaowen Chen","orcid":null,"position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":604795,"name":"Peter Hewins","orcid":"0009-0000-1141-0935","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":354075,"name":"Patricia Mericko-Ishizuka","orcid":"0000-0001-9891-4588","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":244165,"name":"N. Adrian Leu","orcid":null,"position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":354072,"name":"Stephanie Sterling","orcid":"0000-0003-1521-0126","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":302240,"name":"Avery August","orcid":"0000-0003-4968-3415","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":374670,"name":"Kellie A. Jurado","orcid":"0000-0003-0466-2696","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":228733,"name":"Edward E. Morrisey","orcid":"0000-0001-5785-1939","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1135250,"name":"Hector Aguilar-Carreno","orcid":null,"position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":325865,"name":"Mark L. Kahn","orcid":"0000-0002-6489-7086","position":15,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":451310,"name":"Siqi Gao","orcid":"0000-0002-6504-4536","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":27,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:16:07.080027Z","pmid":"37823176","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}