[The propagation of swine fever virus in cultures of macrophages and lymphocytes of normal and immune pigs (author's transl)].

Swine fever virus is replicated in the cells of the lymphoid complex. During the course of the disease cell-destruction, leucopenia and a disturbance of globulin and transferrin production is described. In the case of recovering firstly the leucocyte population, specially the lymphocytes, later on antibody titer increase. The production of virus neutralizing antibodies is not recognizable to be the cause of a recovery, the latter seems to be initiated by the production of a newly formed cell population. Therefore macrophages and lymphocytes of normal and of swine fever immune pigs are compared respecting the virus replication in vitro. Hereby macrophage cultures did not show any differences. In contrast to these findings in the tissue cultures consisting of predominantly lymphocytes of normal animals the virus replication exceeded that of immune pigs. Further on in the lymphatic organs of pigs killed in the recovering state newly formed clones of lymphoid cells were detected, which did not show swine fever specific but a globulin specific fluorescence. Obviously during the reconvalescent state a population of immune relevant lymphocytes is being created, which is different of these of non-immune pigs, since swine fever virus is not propagated by them anymore.