{"doi":"10.3390/ijms24021314","title":"Susceptibility of Fat Tissue to SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Female hACE2 Mouse Model","abstract":"The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is a highly contagious viral illness caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). COVID-19 has had a catastrophic effect globally causing millions of deaths worldwide and causing long-lasting health complications in COVID-19 survivors. Recent studies including ours have highlighted that adipose tissue can act as a reservoir where SARS-CoV-2 can persist and cause long-term health problems. Here, we evaluated the effect of SARS-CoV-2 infection on adipose tissue physiology and the pathogenesis of fat loss in a murine COVID-19 model using humanized angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (hACE2) mice. Since epidemiological studies reported a higher mortality rate of COVID-19 in males than in females, we examined hACE2 mice of both sexes and performed a comparative analysis. Our study revealed for the first time that: (a) viral loads in adipose tissue and the lungs differ between males and females in hACE2 mice; (b) an inverse relationship exists between the viral loads in the lungs and adipose tissue, and it differs between males and females; and (c) CoV-2 infection alters immune signaling and cell death signaling differently in SARS-CoV-2 infected male and female mice. Overall, our data suggest that adipose tissue and loss of fat cells could play important roles in determining susceptibility to CoV-2 infection in a sex-dependent manner.","journal":"International Journal of Molecular Sciences","year":2023,"id":343801,"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":13,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9587,"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":830495,"name":"Dhanya Dhanyalayam","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":713750,"name":"Kezia Lizardo","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":713296,"name":"Neelam Oswal","orcid":"0000-0002-3531-5948","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":830496,"name":"Enriko Dolgov","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":336885,"name":"David S. Perlin","orcid":"0000-0002-1268-5524","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":713297,"name":"Jyothi F. Nagajyothi","orcid":"0000-0003-3541-779X","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":708903,"name":"Hariprasad Thangavel","orcid":"0000-0001-5119-2661","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":68,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:11:26.556051Z","pmid":"36674830","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":[]}