Respiratory diseases can lead to sepsis. However, the current models of sepsis simulate peritoneal sepsis by injecting lipopolysaccharide (LPS) or through other physical methods, but no model of respiratory sepsis is available. A study in Laboratory Animal Research presents a new mouse model of viral respiratory sepsis. The team inoculated BALB/c mice with the H1N1 strain A/PR/8/34 virus with increasing concentrations and scored sepsis over 14 days. The highest concentration had a mortality rate of 100% on day 6. With the second highest concentration, only one animal survived beyond the 14 days of testing. Organ dysfunction was not necessarily a sign that the animal was going to die, but both lung and liver tissue damage were found in non-surviving mice. In this H1N1 model, where the virus is delivered intranasally, animals developed respiratory sepsis, making it a valuable tool to study viral respiratory sepsis in a more translatable way.
Original reference: Jiao, Y. et al. Lab. Anim. Res. 41, 16 (2025)
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