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SARS-CoV-2 Surveillance of Wild Mice and Rats in North American Cities

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Abstract

From July 2020 to June 2021, 248 wild house mice (Mus musculus), deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus), brown rats (Rattus norvegicus), and black rats (Rattus rattus) from Texas and Washington, USA, and British Columbia, Canada, were tested for SARS-CoV-2 exposure and infection. Two brown rats and 11 house mice were positive for neutralizing antibodies using a surrogate virus neutralization test, but negative or indeterminate with the Multiplexed Fluorometric ImmunoAssay COVID-Plex, which targets full-length spike and nuclear proteins. Oro-nasopharyngeal swabs and fecal samples tested negative by RT-qPCR, with an indeterminate fecal sample in one house mouse. Continued surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in wild rodents is warranted.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all participating pest control professionals, notably Jeremy Logsdon and other specialists from Preventive Pest Control who contributed immense time and resources to this project, in addition to members of the Structural Pest Management Association of British Columbia for their expertise in animal collection. We thank staff at the BC Centre for Disease Control and Animal Health Centre for laboratory processing, as well as Chris Huynh and Nikki PI Toledo at the National Microbiology Laboratory for their technical expertise.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Canadian Wildlife Health Cooperative British Columbia, Abbotsford, BC, Canada

    Lisa K. F. Lee, Chelsea G. Himsworth, Harveen K. Atwal, Imara Beattie & Kaylee A. Byers

  2. Department of Veterinary Pathology, Western College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Saskatchewan, 52 Campus Dr, Saskatoon, SK, S7N 5B4, Canada

    Lisa K. F. Lee, Imara Beattie & Bruce K. Wobeser

  3. School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Chelsea G. Himsworth

  4. British Columbia Centre for Disease Control, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Natalie Prystajecky

  5. Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Natalie Prystajecky

  6. Zoonotic Diseases and Special Pathogens, National Microbiology Laboratory, Public Health Agency of Canada, Winnipeg, MB, Canada

    Antonia Dibernardo & L. Robbin Lindsay

  7. Research Models and Services, Charles River, Wilmington, MA, USA

    Theresa M. Albers, Rajeev Dhawan, Ken Henderson & Guy Mulder

  8. Department of Biological Sciences, Fordham University, Bronx, NY, USA

    Michael H. Parsons

  9. Centre for Urban Ecological Solutions, LLC, Spring, TX, USA

    Michael H. Parsons

  10. Pacific Institute On Pathogens, Pandemics and Society, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada

    Kaylee A. Byers

  11. Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada

    Kaylee A. Byers

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  1. Lisa K. F. Lee
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lisa K. F. Lee.

Technical Appendix

Technical Appendix

COVID-Plex and Mouse Hepatitis Virus Multiplexed Fluorometric ImmunoAssay (MFIA)

Nobuto strip eluants from cardiac blood and thoracic fluid were submitted to Charles River Laboratories, Research Animal Diagnostic Services (Wilmington, MA) for serologic testing for SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-Plex MFIA) and mouse hepatitis virus (MHV MFIA).

SARS-CoV-2-specific recombinant spike-full length and nuclear proteins were individually coupled to MagPlex magnetic microspheres (beads) for analysis. In addition, four seasonal coronavirus strain-specific spike full-length protein coupled beads (229E, OC43, HKU1, and NL63 causing the common cold) were added to the panel to check cross-reactivity with SARS-CoV-2-specific spike full-length protein. Internal control beads including wild-baculovirus-infected SF + cell lysate as tissue control and species-specific IgG and anti-IgG as sample and system suitability controls were also in the panel.

The MFIA procedure was performed following the online manual (Charles River Laboratories, 2018). For each assay, the net median fluorescence intensity signal was calculated by subtracting the tissue control from the antigen median fluorescence intensity. Net scores were calculated from net MFIA values based on cutoffs and formulas as described in the manual. Values of < 1.5 and ≥ 3 were classified as negative and positive, respectively; net signals between these cutoffs were called equivocal/indeterminate. A sample was considered SARS-CoV-2 antibody-positive if both full-length spike and nuclear protein antigen-coupled beads were individually positive (i.e., if antibodies against both beads were present).

Standard positive assay control (immune sera) was convalescent serum from SARS-CoV-2-infected humans that had been confirmed positive by PCR. Standard negative assay control sera (species-specific non-immune) were serum pools collected from SARS-CoV-2 antibody-free animals, from which samples were collected prior to 2019.

For detection of MHV antibodies, MFIA was performed as described as above. The MHV assay employs three different bead sets with the following antigens: a purified recombinant nuclear protein for MHV-A59, as well as partially purified whole virus lysates for both MHV-A59 and MHV-S strains coupled to individual bead sets.

Mouse Hepatitis Virus Real-Time PCR

Terminal rectum with feces, oro-nasopharyngeal swabs, and kidneys from mice were submitted to Charles River Laboratories (Wilmington, MA) for MHV PCR testing. Total nucleic acid was extracted from pooled samples using the MagMAX Total Nucleic Acid Isolation Kit (Life Technologies, Carlsbad, CA) using a Qiagen robotic extraction station (Thermo Labsystems, Franklin, MA). Proprietary 3’endonuclease real-time PCR primers and probes were designed to target a conserved region of the MHV nucleocapsid protein (Charles River Laboratories, Wilmington, MA). Betacoronavirus sequences obtained from laboratory mouse, rat, and other wild rodents, which represented both GenBank (NCBI) or unpublished geographically diverse sequences, were aligned to design a broadly cross-reactive assay for MHV detection. PCR assay qualification methods, sample processing and nucleic acid isolation procedures, commercially available reagents, and lab-specific PCR sample and system suitability controls are previously described (Henderson et al. 2013).

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Lee, L.K.F., Himsworth, C.G., Prystajecky, N. et al. SARS-CoV-2 Surveillance of Wild Mice and Rats in North American Cities. EcoHealth 21, 1–8 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10393-024-01679-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10393-024-01679-6

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