Murine AIDS: a model for the human disease or a distinct entity?

The LP-BM5 mixture of murine retroviruses elicits a disease in mice referred to as murine immunodeficiency syndrome (MAIDS) that is considered by some to be an animal homologue of human AIDS. In this article, we present and discuss some recent findings on the pathogenesis of the murine disease and their implications for the proposed homology between murine and human syndromes. The murine disease seems to display as many similarities to as it does differences from human AIDS. Among the latter are: definitive and exclusive viral etiology, a strong genetic effect on susceptibility to infection, expansion of the CD4+ cell population in spleen and peripheral blood, consistent transmissibility by a single transfusion of the minute amounts of blood or plasma from infected donors, and striking similarity between virus-induced alteration of the in vitro spleen cell proliferation and those caused by treatment with a protein kinase inhibitor K252a. With this in mind, the use of the noncommittal term retrovirus-induced murine lymphoproliferative disease instead of MAIDS appears to be more appropriate at this time.