Six rhesus and two vervet monkeys were infected intraperitoneally with Ebola virus. They developed an acute haemorrhagic fever with skin rash 4 days later and died 6--12 days after infection. Histopathological lesions of acute necrosis were present in the liver, spleen, lymph nodes, lungs and testes. The presence of fibrin thrombi in several organs was suggestive of the occurrence of disseminated intravascular coagulation during the infection.
The experimental infection of rhesus and vervet monkeys with the causative agent of a fatal disease in German and Yugoslav laboratory workers is described. All the monkeys developed a uniformly fatal illness irrespective of the dose or route of inoculation. The agent was detected in the monkeys' blood, tissues, saliva and urine. No complement-fixing antibodies to the agent were detected in any of the 201 mostly vervet monkey sera collected in Uganda in areas from which the incriminated batches came, nor in the serum of one langur monkey which had been in contact with these batches at London. The hazards of handling recently captured wild primates and their tissues are pointed out. The isolation of the causative organism of a severe and often fatal human disease that followed the handling of blood and tissues of vervet monkeys (Cercopithecus aethiops) has been reported (Smith, Simpson, Bowen & Zlotnik, 1967; Seigert, Shu, Slenczka, Peters & MUller, 1967). About 30 cases of disease occurred in laboratory workers in Germany and Yugoslavia during August and early September 1967. All the laboratories in question had received monkeys within a few days from the same source in Uganda, and the majority of the batches had been transhipped and held for a period at Heathrow Airport, London, where they had had cOntact with a variety of birds and other animals (Saenz, 1967) including two langur monkeys from Ceylon. The growth of the causative agent in tissue culture has been described (Zlotnik & Simpson, 1968; Zlotnik, Simpson, Bright, Bowen & Batter-Hatton, 1968) and also detailed accounts of the pathological findings in infected guinea-pigs and monkeys (Simpson, Zlotnik & Rutter, 1968). This paper describes experimental infection of monkeys with various dosages of the infective agent, and serological studies on monkeys caught in the areas of Uganda from which the incriminated batches came.
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