Figure 5

Effect of oral administration of LA against viral replication in vivo. (A) Effect of three-day oral administration of LA in K18-hACE2 C57BL/6 J mice with no observed weight change. (B) Effect of six-day oral administration of LA in K18-hACE2 C57BL/6 J mice and mid-term re-infected with observed weight change started on day four. The viral burden in lung tissue was determined by RT-qPCR and is represented as VSV L gene copies normalized to mouse Pol2Ra. (C) SARS-CoV-2 spike protein detection with immunochemical staining in representative lung tissue sections. (D) Quantification of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein performed as described in Material and Method section. Data are presented as mean + / − SD; uninfected untreated animal n = 3, uninfected treated animal n = 3, infected untreated animal n = 8, infected treated animal n = 8, re-infected untreated animal n = 8, re-infected treated animal n = 8, scale bar = 3 mm and 200 μm; LA – linoleic acid; # p ≤ 0.05, ∆ p ≤ 0.01, * p ≤ 0.001, dpi- days post-infection.