Passive transfer of cytomegalovirus by cardiac and renal organ transplants in a rat model.

Passive transfer of latent rat cytomegalovirus (R-CMV) infection by means of vascularized organ transplants was examined in inbred rat strains. LEWIS (LEW) rats 4-5 weeks old were infected with RCMV and used as donors at 5 months of age when the infection had become latent. Well-perfused LEW hearts and kidneys were transplanted into unmodified or 500-rad x-irradiated syngeneic or allogeneic Brown Norway (BN) recipients; recipients were sacrificed 3 weeks after transplantation, and RCMV virus from various organs was quantitated by means of a plaque assay. Passive transfer of latent infection could be accomplished with renal allografts (60%) and renal isografts (40%). When BN hosts were x-irradiated LEW renal allografts invariably transferred the latent infection (100%); cardiac allografts rarely did so (8%). X-irradiation of syngeneic hosts did not enhance the capacity of LEW kidneys to transfer the latent infection. The latent infection could not be transferred with thoracic duct lymphocytes. Results show the passive transfer of latent infection with well-perfused vascularized organ allografts to be a relative organ-specific phenomenon.