Meeting report: 30th International Conference on Antiviral Research, in Atlanta, GA, USA

Vere Hodge, R Anthony

To study the VLs in various tissues (heart, lung, liver, spleen, kidney, muscle, brain, testis and eye), three-week-old A129 mice were infected with wt virus (10 4 IFU) or vaccine. VLs were measured on days 6 and 10. In the wt group on day 6, virus was present in all tissues, the viral titre being about 4-6 IFU/g tissue. By day 10, virus was detected in kidney, brain and eye at low levels (about 4 IFU/g tissue) but at a high level in testis (8 IFU/g tissue). In the vaccine group at day 6, low levels of virus were detected in most tissues but notably not in brain. At day 10, virus was not detected in any tissue. To investigate the potential for neurovirulence, wt virus or vaccine was administered to oneday-old mice by intracerebral inoculation using a range of doses (10, 100, 1000 and 10,000 IFU). In the wt groups, there was a dose-response but there were some deaths even at the lowest dose. In the vaccine groups, there were no deaths, even at the highest dose.