The Influence of Cortisone on Experimental Viral Infection

Abstract

As a host-produced protective substance formed in response to laboratory infections with many viruses, interferon has received deserved attention as a possibly important determinant of the outcome of viral infections in nature. Indeed, recent reports have demonstrated the presence of interferon in blood (1), cerebrospinal fluid (2), pharyngeal washings (3), and dermal crusts (4) during the course of infection in man. Evidence is contradictory, however, as to whether the synthesis of interferon occurs simply as a consequence of viral infection that happens to coincide with the termination of viral replication, or whether its formation is the cardinal factor in bringing this termination about. In the intact animal host this question is difficult to resolve, especially since the formation of specific and nonspecific immune substances also occurs coincident with recovery from viral infection.Viral infection of the chick embryo lacks the simplicity of in vitro infection of cell or tissue culture, but comprises an in vivo system less complex than the infected animal. The advantages of this system have been cited (5) and it lends itself well to the study of the pathogenesis of viral infection divorced from the complicating effects of specific antibody formation oc temperature response. Also, in the case of influenza virus infection of the cells lining the allantoic sac, cellular destruction and inflammatory response may be quanfitated in parallel with virus and interferon formation in assessing the severity or virulence of infection.The present paper reports studies of the pathogenesis of infection with three

Effects of corticosteroids on mouse hepatitis virus infection.

“…Thus it appears possible that the effects in vivo of corticosteroids in enhancing the severity of the mouse viral hepatitis lesion are related to a direct action of the steroids on the reticuloendothelial cells of the liver. It should be mentioned that Smart and Kilbourne (1966), on the basis of studies on the kinetics of interferon synthesis, suggested that the deleterious effects of steroids in their system might, at least in some strains, be mediated by a suppression of interferon synthesis. In the present studies, no experiments on interferon synthesis were carried out.…”