Mechanisms of viral immunopathology

Properties of the immunosuppressive factor induced by murine cytomegalovirus

Murine cytomegalovirus infection of spleen cultures induced the production of a small (less than 10,000 molecular weight) immunosuppressive factor (VISF), which suppressed concanavalin-A mitogenesis in fresh mouse spleen cells, and in fresh human peripheral blood leukocytes. The factor did not affect the growth of two murine T-cell lines or of mouse fibroblasts. A similar factor was also found in the serum of infected mice, at the time of maximum immune suppression. The properties of VISF indicate that the mechanism of MCMV immune suppression is different from that caused by several other viruses which are important in human and veterinary medicine.

Immunity, viral pathology and assessment of immune dysfunction in virology and toxicology

General patterns of tissue injury are recognized as characteristic for certain groups of viruses and certain types of host/virus interactions. Acute viral infections, limited in time and space, tend to be accompanied by florid but brief virus replication cycles in tissues and lesions or signs of disease are largely attributable to the cytolytic effects of the virus on host cells. Chronic or persistent viral diseases tend to have low (or difficult to detect) levels of infectious virus on tissues and the lesions tend to be dominated by inflammation, antiviral immune responses and/or host tissue proliferation. At the cellular level, 3 general categories of response to viral infection are recognized: acute cellular swelling with eventual cytolysis, persistent infection, and transformation (neoplastic) infection. Acute cellular swelling may be accompanied by syncytial giant cell formation and/or viral inclusion bodies. Cells persistently infected with viruses though morphologically normal, are increasingly recognized as functionally deficient and may eventually display degenerative change. Transformation to neoplastic growth can be both benign or malignant in cellular expression. In vivo, the initial neutrophilic inflammatory response to virus-induced cellular necrosis is transient and is rapidly superseded by virus-specific inflammation mediated by both humoral and cellular factors and supplemented by the numerous inflammation amplification pathways. Vasculitis, a common but frequently unappreciated event, may produce nonspecific tissue damage via hemorrhage and ischemia in addition to providing a mechanism for egress of inflammatory factors into the areas of virus-induced cellular damage. During the healing phase, repair by substitution (e.g., fibrosis and scarring) or by proliferation of uninfected replacement cells may dominate sites of viral infection.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Pathogenesis of viral infections

The article considers factors that influence pathogenesis, initiation of infection, dissemination of virus within a host, lytic viral infections, viral immunosuppression, viral immunopathology, and viral oncogenesis.