Antigenic relationships between measles and canine distemper viruses: comparison of immune response in animals and humans to individual virus-specific polypeptides.

Precipitation with hyperimmune rabbit sera, sera from patients convalescing from measles, and sera from patients with subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, followed by electrophoresis, enabled antigenic relationships between the individual polypeptides of measles and canine distemper viruses to be examined. Virus isolates from patients with acute measles or subacute sclerosing panencephalitis showed no antigenic differences. With rabbit hyperimmune sera, antigenic crossreactivity was present between all polypeptides of measles and canine distemper viruses except H. The N polypeptides showed the highest degree of crossreactivity and were interpreted as group-specific antigens. Both convalescent measles sera and sera from subacute sclerosing panencephalitis showed high antibody titers to all measles polypeptides except L and M. However, these sera contained only low activities to the N and F1 polypeptides from canine distemper virus.