Staskus K A, Couch L, Bitterman P, Retzel E F, Zupancic M, List J, Haase A T
Department of Microbiology, University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis 55455.
Microb Pathog. 1991 Jul;11(1):67-76. doi: 10.1016/0882-4010(91)90095-r.
Maedi and visna are, respectively, the pulmonary and neurological manifestations of slowly progressive infections of sheep caused by retroviruses of the lentivirus subfamily. Lentivirus infections are also persistent infections in which host defenses are generally not successful in eliminating the infectious agent because of restricted viral gene expression in many infected cells. In this report, we describe a method for amplifying and detecting viral DNA in tissue sections which has made it possible to verify experimentally the postulated existence of this reservoir of latently infected cells, as well as to estimate the actual number of cells which harbor viral genomes in infected tissues. In the discussion, we present a simple mathematical model that relates this number to the rate at which inflammatory lesions develop. This model can account for both the slow progression of natural infections and for the rapid accumulation of inflammatory foci in the high dosage experimental system analysed in our studies.
梅迪病和维斯纳病分别是由慢病毒亚科逆转录病毒引起的绵羊缓慢进行性感染的肺部和神经表现。慢病毒感染也是持续性感染，由于许多受感染细胞中病毒基因表达受限，宿主防御通常无法成功清除感染因子。在本报告中，我们描述了一种在组织切片中扩增和检测病毒DNA的方法，该方法使得通过实验验证潜伏感染细胞库的假定存在成为可能，同时也能够估计感染组织中携带病毒基因组的细胞实际数量。在讨论部分，我们提出了一个简单的数学模型，将这个数量与炎症病变发展的速率联系起来。该模型可以解释自然感染的缓慢进展以及我们研究中分析的高剂量实验系统中炎症病灶的快速积累。
