K Virus Infection, Mouse

Abstract

Gross pathologic changes associated with K virus infection are confined to the lungs and are most prominent in mice less than 8 days of age, in whom K virus produces a fatal interstitial pneumonia (Fisher and Kilham 1953; Holt 1959; Greenlee 1979, 1981); lungs of these fatally infected animals are congested and edematous on cut section. In older suckling animals, similar changes of lesser severity are present during the acute stages of infection (Fisher and Kilham 1953; Greenlee 1981). Gross changes are not evident in lungs of immunologically normal weanling or adult mice during acute K virus infection and do not occur during K virus infection in nude (nu/nu) mice or in reactivated K virus infection under conditions of immunosuppression (Fisher and Kilham 1953; Greenlee 1981, 1986; Greenlee and Dodd 1984). Acute K virus infection in older animals immunosuppressed with cyclophosphamide, however, resembles the infection seen in newborn mice and may be accompanied by pulmonary congestion (Mokhtarian and Shah 1980). K virus does not produce gross pathologic changes in other organs of newborn or older mice, and gross changes in other organs are not seen in immunosuppressed animals.