Avian influenza A/H7N9 virus infection causes pneumonia in humans with a high case fatality rate. However, virus-induced modulation of immune responses is being recognized increasingly as a factor in the pathogenesis of this disease. In this study, we compared the pathogenicity of A/H7N9 infection in BALB/c and C57BL/6 mouse models, and investigated the putative involvement of proinflammatory cytokines in lung injury and viral clearance. In both mouse strains, A/Anhui/1/2013(H7N9) infection with 106 TCID50 resulted in viral replication in lung, severe body weight loss and acute lung injury. During the early infection stage, infected C57BL/6 mice exhibited more severe lung injury, slower recovery from lung damage, less effective viral clearance, higher levels of interlukine (IL)-6, monocyte chemotactic protein (MCP)-1, and IL-1β, and lower levels of tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α and interferon (IFN)-γ than infected BALB/c mice. These results suggest that TNF-α and IFN-γ may help suppress viral gene expression and increase viral clearance, and that IL-6 and MCP-1 may contribute to lung injury in A/H7N9-infected individuals. In addition, lung damage and the distribution of virus antigen in tissues were similar in young and middle-aged mice. These results suggest that the more serious lung injury in middle-aged or older H7N9 cases is not mainly caused by differences in viral replication in the lung but probably by a dysregulated immune response induced by underlying comorbidities. These results indicate that the extent of dysregulation of the host immune response after H7N9 virus infection most probably determines the outcome of H7N9 virus infection.
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