AAAR 37th Annual Conference October 14 - October 18, 2019 Oregon Convention Center Portland, Oregon, USA
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Comparison of Large Particle vs Small Particle Aerosolized Rabbitpox Virus Exposure in New Zealand White Rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus)
AYSEGUL NALCA, USAMRIID
Abstract Number: 444 Working Group: Bioaerosols
Abstract Rabbitpox virus (RPXV) is an orthopoxvirus that causes severe respiratory disease in rabbits when delivered by small particle aerosol in experimental infections. This model represents an important and informative system to evaluate medical countermeasures against orthopoxviruses because it has a disease course similar to monkeypox and smallpox in humans. It is believed that small particle aerosol exposure would be the major route of infection in the event that orthopoxviruses are used as biological weapons or in a terrorist attack. The small particle exposure represents exposure from an artificial source, but fails to capture the inherent aerosol heterodispersity associated with secondary transmission of poxviruses from infected to naïve host. The large particle aerosol route of exposure plays a significant role in secondary transmission and is considered to be an important, if not the major, natural route of transmission for smallpox in humans. Thus, it needs to be determined, if a larger particle aerosol would induce similar disease progression as the small particle aerosol experiment in rabbits. In order to address this question, groups of rabbits were exposed to different doses of aerosolized large and small particle rabbitpox virus. In the large particle groups, all rabbits show various signs of the rabbitpox disease from mild to severe. The small particle groups also showed mild to severe signs of the disease, but with an earlier onset of the disease compare to large particle exposure groups. This study shows that small particle poxviruses, if used as a biological weapon, would have a more rapid disease progression than large particles of the same virus.