Retrovirus-Induced Arthritis

Abstract

Initial experiments with caprine arthritis-encephalitis virus (CAEV) demonstrated that leukoencephalomyelitis occurring in young kids of a goat herd could be transmitted with 220-nm filtrates of tissue suspensions [1]. A virus was subsequently isolated by explantation of synovial membrane from an arthritic adult goat from the same herd [2]. This virus replicated in fetal goat synovial cells and caused both arthritis and encephalitis when inoculated into Caesarean-derived, specific pathogen-free goat kids [2]. Evaluation of the physical and biochemical properties of the virus resulted in its classification as a retrovirus [2–4]. Immunologic and morphologic studies indicated similarities among CAE, maedi-visna, and progressive pneumonia viruses of sheep [2,5,6]. The primary immunologic similarity was cross reaction of the major structural protein of the viruses [5,7] even though cross reactions with other viral proteins occurred [6]. Competitive inhibition of hybridization, however, demonstrated that CAEV exhibited less than 20% genome sequence homology with visna and progressive pneumonia viruses and was therefore distinct from these ovine lentiviruses [7].