Rabies virus neuritic paralysis: immunopathogenesis of nonfatal paralytic rabies.

Two pathogenetically distinct disease manifestations are distinguished in a murine model of primary rabies virus infection with the Evelyn-Rokitnicky-Abelseth strain, rabies virus neuritic paralysis (RVNP) and fatal encephalopathogenic rabies. RVNP develops with high incidence in immunocompetent mice after intraplantar infection as a flaccid paralysis restricted to the infected limb. The histopathologic correlate of this monoplegia is a degeneration of the myelinated motor neurons of the peripheral nerve involved. While, in this model, fatal encephalopathogenic rabies develops only after depletion of the CD4 subset of T lymphocytes and without contribution of the CD8 subset, RVNP is identified as an immunopathological process in which both the CD4 and CD8 subsets of T lymphocytes are critically implicated.