INTRASPINOUS INFECTION IN EXPERIMENTAL POLIOMYELITIS

Abstract

By intraspinous injections of specimens of poliomyelitic virus of suitable virulence infection can be caused regularly in Macacus rhesus monkeys. The virus passes from the subarachnoid spaces into the nervous tissues in which it multiplies, and into the blood. The constant involvement of the pia-arachnoid membranes in poliomyelitis, even when no paralysis occurs, and the fact that infection can readily be produced by intraspinous inoculation suggests anew that in the pathogenesis of poliomyelitis the interstitial tissue changes within the meninges, blood vessels, and ground substance play a determining part. While the virus injected into the subarachnoid spaces can be demonstrated there by inoculation tests forty-eight hours after the injection it can no longer be detected on the sixth day, at a time when the first symptoms of infection make their appearance. The failure of the cerebrospinal fluid from human and experimental cases of poliomyelitis to produce the disease when inoculated into monkeys is due to the fact that the virus is either fixed by the nervous tissues or passes into the blood.