Ausschuss für Hygiene

Host species:

• natural host: laboratory and wild mice, pet and laboratory hamsters, wild rats, humans
• guinea pig, rats and baboons can be infected experiementally
• some continius cell lines are virus carrier, e.g. mouse neuroblastoma (N18), baby hamster kidney cells (BHK-21) and transplantable tumor cells of infected animals

Organotropism:

• kidney
• salivary gland
• lymphohemopoietic cells
• other organs

Clinical disease:

• clinical signs vary with strain of infected animals, route of inoculation and strain of virus
• cerebral form in mice follows artificial intracerebral inoculation
• visceral form in mice shows asymptomatic conjunctivitis, ascites, somnolence after peripheral inoculation
  
• wasting disease in hamsters (GENOVESI, E.V. 1987)
• febrile illness, grippe-like symptoms in humans (MEATZ, H.M. 1976)
• sensorineural deafness and labyrinth damage, meningeal involvement in humans (HIRSCH, E. 1976)
• autoimmune haemolytic anaemia in different mice strains (COUTELIER, J.P. 1994)

Pathology:

• nonsuppurative leptomeningitis, choroiditis
• inflammatory lesions in many organs
• murine hepatitis (GOSSMANN, J. 1995; LOHLER, J. 1994)

Morbidity und mortality:

• LCMV strain ARM ist avirulent for different hamster strains and guinea pig (GENOVESI, E.V. 1987; GENOVESI, E.V. 1989)
• LCMV strain WE causes 100% mortality in guinea pigs (RIVIERE, Y. 1985) and high morbidity of inbred Syrian golden hamsters
• Prevalence of different hamster inbred strains is known (GENOVESI, E.V. 1987)

Zoonotic potential:

• congenital lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus syndrome in humans (EL KARAMANY, R.M. 1991; WRIGHT, R. et al 1997)
• LCMV is the causative agent for hamster associated lymphocytic choriomeningitis infection of humans (LEHMANN-GRUBE,F. 1979;GARMAN,R.H. 1977;MEATZ,H.M. 1976;ACKERMANN,R.1977)
• Hamster transmit the virus to humans
• Virus is shed in saliva, nasal secretions and urine of infected animals
• wild mice and rats are a natural reservoir of infection (ACKERMANN, R. 1964; SMITH, A.L. 1993)

Interference with research:

Immunology

• LCMV causes a long lasting immunodepression with decrease of proliferation capacity of splenic T-lymphocytes (SARON, M.F. 1991; SARON, M.F. 1990; THOMSON, A.R. 1982; COLLE, J.H.1993)
• LCMV induces polyclonal cytotoxic T-lymphocyte stimulation (YANG, H.Y. 1989)
• neonatally or congenitally infected mice have a lifelong chronic lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus infection (JAMIESON, B.D. 1987)
• enhances the interleukin 12-mediated immuno toxicities (ORANGE, J.S. 1995; ORANGE, J.S. 1994)
• LCMV induced different expression of alpha/beta interferons (SANDBERG, K. 1994)

Oncology

• may influence experimental oncology, enhances the fequency of lymphoma after treatment with carcinogen (GARMAN, R.H. 1977)
• enhances the susceptibility for transplantable tumor cell lines (KOHLER, M. 1990)

Physiology

• growth hormon deficiency can occure (OLDSTONE, M.B. 1985)

References:

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