PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Xia Xue
AU  - Yongan Tian
AU  - Mingsan Miao
AU  - Jianyao Wang
AU  - Wenxue Tang
AU  - Yaohe Wang
AU  - Jianbo Liu
AU  - Hongen Xu
AU  - Jinxin Miao
TI  - SARS-CoV-2 infecting the inner ear results in potential hearing damage at the early stage or prognosis of COVID-19 in rodents
AID  - 10.1101/2020.12.23.423942
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.12.23.423942
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/12/25/2020.12.23.423942.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/12/25/2020.12.23.423942.full
AB  - Objectives In order to find out the association between the sensorineural hearing loss and COVID-19, we detected the expression ACE2 and TMPRSS2 in the mouse the hamster.Design Using the public data from NCBI and GISAID, we assessed the expression of ACE2 and TMPRSS2 at the transcriptomic, DNA, and protein levels of ACE2 in the brain, inner ear, and muscle from the golden Syrian hamster (Mesocricetus auratus) and mouse (Mus musculus).Results We identified ACE2 and TMPRSS2 expressed at different level in the inner ear and brain at DNA and transcriptomic levels of both mouse and the hamster. The protein expression shows a similar pattern of the brain and inner ear, while the expression of ACE2 from the inner ear was relatively higher than it from the muscle.Conclusion SARS-CoV-2 could infect the hearing system potentially and SSNHL could be a characteristic to detect asymptomatic patients of COVID-19.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.