The Development of a Neurotropic Strain of Measles Virus in Hamsters and Mice

Abstract

The study of measles virus in experimental animals has received considerable attention over the years. Early data (reviewed by Enders, 1940) were conflicting and poorly documented. The difficulty in much of the earlier work was the lack of a suitable means for demonstrating the presence of virus. The tissue culture studies of Enders and Peebles (1954) (and of many others since) provided the previously unavailable virus indicator system. In recent years experimental measles has been studied in the monkey (Taniguchi et al, 1954; Peebles et al, 1957), the dog (Ryszantseva, 1956; Moura and Warren, 1961), the mouse (Imagawa and Adams, 1958; Carlstrom, 1958), and the hamster (Burnstein et al, 1958; Waksman et al, 1962). Studies in rodents are of particular interest in that the site of infection is the central nervous system. The fact that measles virus can replicate in nervous tissue appears important since the pathogenetic mechanism of measles encephalomyelitis is still not understood.