Front Immunol . Frequent Infection of Cats With SARS-CoV-2 Irrespective of Pre-Existing Enzootic Coronavirus Immunity, Brazil 2020

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Front Immunol


. 2022 Apr 5;13:857322.
doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2022.857322. eCollection 2022.
Frequent Infection of Cats With SARS-CoV-2 Irrespective of Pre-Existing Enzootic Coronavirus Immunity, Brazil 2020


Edmilson F de Oliveira-Filho ¹ , Otávio V de Carvalho ² , Ianei O Carneiro ³ , Fagner D'ambroso Fernandes ⁴ , Sara Nunes Vaz ⁵ , Célia Pedroso ⁵ , Lilian Gonzalez-Auza ¹ , Victor Carvalho Urbieta ¹ , Arne Kühne ¹ , Rafaela Mayoral ³ , Wendy K Jo ¹ , Andrés Moreira-Soto ¹ , Chantal B E M Reusken ⁶ , Christian Drosten ¹ , Carlos Brites ⁵ , Klaus Osterrieder ⁷ , Eduardo Martins Netto ⁵ , Luiz Eduardo Ristow ² , Rita de Cassia Maia ⁸ , Fernanda S Flores Vogel ⁴ , Nadia Rossi de Almeida ³ , Carlos Roberto Franke ³ , Jan Felix Drexler ^{1 9}



Affiliations

• PMID: 35450070
• PMCID: PMC9016337
• DOI: 10.3389/fimmu.2022.857322

Abstract

Carnivores such as cats and minks are highly susceptible to SARS-CoV-2. Brazil is a global COVID-19 hot spot and several cases of human-to-cat transmission have been documented. We investigated the spread of SARS-CoV-2 by testing 547 domestic cats sampled between July-November 2020 from seven states in southern, southeastern, and northeastern Brazil. Moreover, we investigated whether immune responses elicited by enzootic coronaviruses affect SARS-CoV-2 infection in cats. We found infection with significantly higher neutralizing antibody titers against the Gamma variant of concern, endemic in Brazil during 2020, than against an early SARS-CoV-2 B.1 isolate (p<0.0001), validating the use of Gamma for further testing. The overall SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence in Brazilian cats during late 2020 validated by plaque reduction neutralization test (PRNT₉₀) was 7.3% (95% CI, 5.3-9.8). There was no significant difference in SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence in cats between Brazilian states, suggesting homogeneous infection levels ranging from 4.6% (95% CI, 2.2-8.4) to 11.4% (95% CI, 6.7-17.4; p=0.4438). Seroprevalence of the prototypic cat coronavirus Feline coronavirus (FCoV) in a PRNT₉₀ was high at 33.3% (95% CI, 24.9-42.5) and seroprevalence of Bovine coronavirus (BCoV) was low at 1.7% (95% CI, 0.2-5.9) in a PRNT₉₀. Neutralizing antibody titers were significantly lower for FCoV than for SARS-CoV-2 (p=0.0001), consistent with relatively more recent infection of cats with SARS-CoV-2. Neither the magnitude of SARS-CoV-2 antibody titers (p=0.6390), nor SARS-CoV-2 infection status were affected by FCoV serostatus (p=0.8863). Our data suggest that pre-existing immunity against enzootic coronaviruses neither prevents, nor enhances SARS-CoV-2 infection in cats. High SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence already during the first year of the pandemic substantiates frequent infection of domestic cats and raises concerns on potential SARS-CoV-2 mutations escaping human immunity upon spillback.

Keywords: SARS-CoV-2; cats (felis catus); coronavirus; cross-reactivity; serology; zoonosis.