Immune response to lactate dehydrogenase-elevating virus: isolation of infectious virus-immunoglobulin G complexes and quantitation of specific antiviral immunoglobulin G response in wild-type and nude mice.

Lactate dehydrogenase-elevating virus (LDV) causes a normally benign persistent infection of mice, resulting in a life-long viremia characterized by the presence of circulating infectious immune complexes, impaired clearance of certain enzymes from the blood, and modification of the host immune response to various heterologous antigens. In this study, we isolated infectious immunoglobulin G (IgG)-LDV complexes in the plasma of persistently infected mice by adsorption to and elution from protein A-Sepharose CL-4B. We found that practically all infectious LDV in the plasma of persistently infected mice is complexed to IgG. LDV infectivity in these complexes was partially neutralized, but could be reactivated by treatment with 2-mercaptoethanol. We also quantitated total plasma IgG and anti-LDV IgG in wild-type and nude Swiss and BALB/c mice as a function of the time after infection with LDV by radial immunodiffusion and an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, respectively. Total plasma IgG levels nearly doubled in BALB/c mice during 150 days of infection. IgG levels in uninfected nude mice were only 20% of those in uninfected BALB/c mice, but during infection with LDV increased to approximately those found in uninfected BALB/c mice. Anti-LDV IgG levels were almost as high in nude mice as in normal BALB/c mice. Isoelectric focusing of purified IgG from BALB/c mice showed that LDV infection resulted in the enhanced synthesis of all 16 normal IgG fractions that we could separate by this method, which suggests that LDV infection results in polyclonal activation of IgG-producing lymphocytes.