Human Coronavirus Infections

Abstract

The first report of a human coronavirus was in 1965 when Tyrrell and Bynoe (1965) isolated a virus from the nasal washings of a male child. The child had typical symptoms and signs of a common cold and the washing was found to be able to induce common colds in volunteers challenged intranasally. The virus, termed B814 (after the number of the nasal washing), could be cultivated in human embryo tracheal organ tissue but not in cell lines used at that time for growing other known etiologic agents of the common cold. At the same time, Hamre and Procknow (1966) were characterizing five “new” agents isolated from the respiratory tract of medical students with colds. One of these agents, strain 229E, was adapted to grow in WI-38 cells. Subsequently, Almeida and Tyrrell (1967) showed that these isolates were morphologically identical to the viruses of avian bronchitis and mouse hepatitis. Mcintosh and colleagues (1967a), working at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, then isolated six morphologically related viruses that could not be adapted to cell monolayer culture but would grow in organ cultures. Two of these isolates, OC (for organ culture) 38 and 43 were then adapted to grow in suckling mice brain. The term “Coronavirus,” which described the characteristic morphology of these agents, was accepted in 1968 (Tyrrell et al., 1968a).KeywordsMultiple Sclerosis PatientCommon ColdAdaptation Adaptation Adaptation Adaptation AdaptationPrimary IsolationRespiratory Tract DiseaseThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.