Mouse Hepatitis Virus Receptor as a Determinant of the Mouse Susceptibility to MHV Infection

Taguchi, Fumihiro; Hirai-Yuki, Asuka

Mouse hepatitis virus (MHV) is a murine coronavirus which causes a wide range of diseases in the mouse and rat, including hepatitis, enteritis, respiratory diseases, and encephalomyelitis in the central nervous system (Wege et al., 1982) . There are also great differences in tissue tropism and virulence among various strains and isolates of MHV (Hirano et al., 1981; Wege et al., 1982) . Complex factors, such as age and immunological status of the host animal, dose, and route of virus inoculation, affect disease outcomes Hirano et al., 1981) . Naturally occurring cases of MHV infections in mouse colonies are generally enteric infections that are not highly pathogenic to immunocompetent adult mice, while virus infections are mostly of a persistent nature (Ishida et al., 1978; Homberger, 1997) . Viruses shed in the feces from persistently infected mice are a source of acute and chronic fatal diseases encountered in mice prone to MHV infection, e.g., diarrhea of suckling mice and wasting syndrome in immunodeficient nude mice (Hirano et al., 1975; Tamura et al., 1977; Ishida et al., 1978) . Thus, the asymptomatic infection of adult mice is a major problem in animal facilities where MHV-free mice are used for experiments and evokes serious problems in terms of maintaining animals of sufficient quality to allow scientists to perform experiments with high reproducibility and reliability.