Victoria Meliopoulos, Rebekah Honce, Brandi Livingston, Virginia Hargest, Pamela Freiden, Lauren Lazure, Pamela H Brigleb, Erik Karlsson, Heather Sheppard, E Kaity Allen, David Boyd, Paul G Thomas, Stacey Schultz-Cherry
Obesity, and the associated metabolic syndrome, is a risk factor for increased disease severity with a variety of infectious agents, including influenza virus. Yet, the mechanisms are only partially understood. As the number of people, particularly children, living with obesity continues to rise, it is critical to understand the role of host status on disease pathogenesis. In these studies, we use a diet-induced obese ferret model and tools to demonstrate that, like humans, obesity resulted in notable changes to the lung microenvironment, leading to increased clinical disease and viral spread to the lower respiratory tract...
May 10, 2024: Science Advances