Congenital retinitis in the rat following maternal exposure to lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus.

A combined clinical and histopathological study of the eyes of the offspring of females inoculated with LCMV shows that about two-thirds of the pups develop some degree of retinal inflammation. This may range from a mild, subclinical reaction to an overt retinitis characterized clinically by demonstrable inflammatory and degenerative changes. Histopathologically, the latter condition presents the picture of an inflammatory reaction with extensive loss of photoreceptors and retinal neurons in general, macrophagic invasion, mild microcystoid degeneration and total or subtotal retinal detachment. This vertically-transmitted disease does not show the relentless progression and hemorrhagic tendency characteristic of the retinitis which occurs after direct viral inoculation. However, in the most severe cases the final outcome is the same, namely severe retinal impairment subsequent to widespread loss of photoreceptors. In the presence of consistently negative virological data, the hypothesis is proposed that this retinitis could be the result of a vertically-transmitted autoimmune disease.