Infection of laboratory workers with hantavirus acquired from immunocytomas propagated in laboratory rats

Hantaviruses

“…Other cell lines that support the growth of hantaviruses include hybridoma cells [42], primary human adult endothelial cells [43], primary human umbilical vein endothelial cells [44], murine macrophage-like continuous cell lines [45], primary rat peritoneal exudate cells and primary rat macrophages and primary human adherent mononuclear cells [46], a large number of human continuous cell lines of lung, kidney, liver and salivary origin and primary human kidney cells [47]. There is no evidence of CPE in any of these cell types.…”

“…Laboratory-and animal facility-acquired hantavirus disease is well recognised throughout the world, arising from contact with naturally infected wild rodents [72], experimentally infected laboratory rodents [73] and from laboratory rodents with unsuspected infections [74,75]. Human disease caused by hantaviruses present in continuous cell lines has also been reported [42,76]. There were 33 outbreaks of HFRS from 1976 to 1985 among personnel in laboratory animal facilities in Korea and Japan [8].…”

Biosafety Tips

“…The report describes the uncontained maceration and homogenization of rat tissue that allowed the aerosol transmission of Hantavirus (Lloyd & Jones, 1986). At a cancer research institute in the United Kingdom, four clinical cases of Hantavirus infection occurred in laboratory personnel between January and July 1977.…”

“…Sera obtained from infected rats also transmitted the virus. The authors point out that frozen antibody and tumor samples were a previously undetected reservoir of Hantavirus that had accumulated at this institute in the 10-year period following the importation of the Louvain rat model (Lloyd & Jones, 1986). Screening the animal colony for evidence of Hantavirus infection became standard practice in the institution's animal program following this outbreak.…”

Zoonoses: Proceedings of the third Liverpool Tropical School Bayer Symposium on Microbial Diseases held on 3 February 1996

“…Infection is transmitted to man by inhalation of dried rodent faeces, urine or saliva and has also been transmitted by bite. Rare cases of infection have been associated with handling rat plasmocytoma cells in the laboratory [92]. The fact that the reservoir host species do not develop disease when infected with hantavirus makes development of animal models difficult.…”