SSPE Patients Research Articles

The significance of failure to isolate infectious viruses in cases of subacute sclerosing panencephalitis. Brief report.

The recent isolation of a measles-like infectious virus from patients with SSPE has focused attention on this virus as a possible etiologic agent of this disease. Our studies of brain cell cultures from six SSPE patients revealed that each culture bore some evidence of the viral presence,i.e., morphological changes associated with a paramyxovirus, the presence of a measles-like antigen in immunofluorescence tests, and structures resembling viral nucleocapsids, as seen by the electron microscope. Yet none of these cultures, upon repeated attempts at fusion with susceptible indicator cells, yielded an infectious virus. We conclude that a complete paramyxovirus is not required for the pathogenesis of SSPE, but that its syncytiogenic effect—an early viral function—is. The effect, coupled with the presence of a second virus, may be the basis of the etiology of this disease.

Subacute Sclerosing Panencephalitis

<h3>To the Editor:—</h3> The report states that there were three differences from the study by Katz et al. Transmission of an encephalitogenic agent was not possible. Much higher serum measles antibody titers were observed. There were only type B nucleiform inclusions in our patients. These observations have now been extended to four other patients. We would point out that the variation in clinical onset, stages, duration of SSPE, the immune responses in the patients, and the intensity of the measles virus infection in the brain may result in the differences in serum measles antibody titers, the pathological features, and the success or failure to transmit the agent to ferrets or monkeys. Furthermore, differences in antibody titers between laboratories may be due to the techniques employed. A thorough search for other inclusions in two other biopsy specimens from SSPE patients, as well as a review of the previous

Isolation of measles virus from brain cell cultures of two patients with subacute sclerosing panencephalitis.

SummaryMeasles virus was isolated from brain cell tissue cultures derived from two SSPE patients. These cultures proved to contain intracellular measles antigen which was not released in the fluid phase. Infectious, complete virus was obtained when mixed cultures containing the brain cells and HeLa cells were prepared. It appears that SSPE is due to suppressed measles virus infection. Once “rescued” through the mixed culture technique, the virus recovered from SSPE patients proved indistinguishable from measles virus.Note added in proof: At the time of galley review of this paper, confirmation of our previous isolation of complete infectious measles virus was reported by Payne, F. E., Baublis, J. V. and Itabashi, H. H. (Isolation of Measles Virus from Cell Cultures of Brain from a Patient with Subacute Sclerosing Panencephalitis, New England Journal of Medicine 281, 585, 1969). These authors used the mixed culture technique which we reported for this purpose (Horta-Barbosa, L., Fuccillo, D. A., Sever, J. ...