Mice as Small Animal Model for Human Norovirus Infection

Despite being discovered in 1972, the development of vaccines to prevent Human Norovirus (HuNoV) infection in humans remains limited. This limitation is partly due to inadequate knowledge about Norovirus infection in non-human hosts and its pathogenic process. This research was performed to assess the efficacy of HuNoV infection in mice as an animal model by using both different infection routes and virus titers. In this research, 20 BALB/c Mus musculus were used as the test animals which were randomly divided into 4 groups. Intraperitoneal and oral infection methods were employed using different viral titers. The mice were euthanized on the fifth day to obtain fecal samples from the colon organ. Afterwards, Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction (qPCR) was administered to evaluate these samples. Most of the mice did not show symptom, except one mouse that experienced diarrhea. The HuNoV virus replication in the mice was measured using qPCR analysis. Three of the twenty mice showed elevated virus titers after being infected with HuNoV. In conclusion, BALB/c strain mice remained resistant to HuNoV infection when exposed to the virus through the oral route. Conversely, the use of high viral titers for intraperitoneal infection indicated the presence of viral replication.