Intracranial Inoculation Is More Potent Than Intranasal Inoculation for Inducing Optic Neuritis in the Mouse Hepatitis Virus-Induced Model of Multiple Sclerosis

Singh, Manmeet; Khan, Reas S.; Dine, Kimberly; Das Sarma, Jayasri; Shindler, Kenneth S.

Intracranial, but Not Intranasal, Inoculation With RSA59 Induces Optic Neuritis Mice inoculated intracranially with RSA59 have been found to exhibit retrograde axonal transport of virus from the lateral geniculate nuclei along the optic nerve into the retina, and can cause optic nerve inflammation and demyelination (Shindler et al., 2011) , whereas RSMHV2 does not. To investigate whether intranasal RSA59 administration can induce optic nerve demyelination similar to intracranial inoculation, 5 µm thick serial optic nerve sections from the same mice shown in Figure 1 were stained with LFB. RSA59, when infected intracranially, induced significant myelin loss with notable demyelinating plaques in optic nerves, (Figure 2 ) as previously observed (Shindler et al., 2008) . Similar to spinal cord, little or no demyelinating plaques were observed in optic nerve sections of RSA59 infected mice when injected intranasally, which was comparable to RSMHV2 and mock infected mice.