Gut infection and dysbiosis are hallmarks of severe SARS-CoV-2 variants
Bibliographic record
Abstract
SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind the COVID-19 pandemic, is primarily a respiratory pathogen, with host entry mediated by the ACE2 receptor that determines viral tropism. Notably, in humans, ACE2 is highly expressed in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, particularly the small intestine (SI), prompting us to examine GI infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOCs). We found that ACE2 expression in Syrian hamsters closely resembles humans, supporting their use in studying GI tropism. Using this model, we compared infection and pathology of the ancestral Wuhan-like strain (Hong Kong), Delta, and Omicron variants. Despite high ACE2 expression, GI infection and pathology were generally low relative to the respiratory tract. However, the Delta variant showed markedly enhanced GI infectivity and pathology, especially in the SI, and caused the greatest disruption of the gut microbiome. These findings link SARS-CoV-2 virulence with GI infection and microbiome disturbance, establishing Syrian hamsters as a relevant model.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.017 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".