Gilbert Dalldorf

A virus has been recovered from the feces of two children having symptoms similar to those of poliomyelitis. The virus is pathogenic for suckling mice and hamsters but not for rhesus monkeys. It induces striking lesions in the skeletal muscles of the experimental animal but not in the central nervous system. Other viruses inducing similar signs and lesions in suckling mice have been isolated from several other outbreaks of a poliomyelitis-like disease, including one large urban epidemic.

Gravid mice become progressively more susceptible to infection with the pancreatic line of Group B-1 Coxsackie virus during the last week of pregnancy. A Group A-8 strain did not have such an effect. The young that survive despite the fact that their mothers are infected with a B-1 strain appear to be normal in the gross and microscopically, to grow at the usual rate, to be free of demonstrable virus, and to be susceptible on challenge with a homologous strain.

Young mice infected with Group B Coxsackie virus were rendered markedly resistant to poliomyelitis virus given from 4 to 10 days later. A sparing effect was detectable in somewhat older mice and in young mice inoculated with poliomyelitis after shorter intervals, but in both cases few mice survived. Interference was manifest by survival, by prolongation of the course of poliomyelitis, and by a decreased frequency of poliomyelitis.

An alteration of tissue tropism of a Coxsackie virus has been observed following different methods of propagation of the virus in animals. Tropism for the adult mouse pancreas, as described by Pappenheimer, appeared to be irrevocably lost following prolonged brain-to-brain transfer. It was present in the same strain on reisolation from human feces, was intensified following pancreas transfers, and suppressed by brain transfers. Pancreatotropism may be correlated with the titer of virus ...

Coxsackie virus, Group A, Type 14, has been adapted to adult mice and monkeys and induces in them poliomyelitis-like lesions and, in the case of the mice, flaccid paralysis.

For general practitioners, in whose practice is included a major proportion of the medical management of infants and children, and for the specializing pediatrician as well, Postgraduate Medicine presents this special regular department devoted to brief discussions by recognized authorities on their preferred methods of the treatment and management of diseases and problems of infancy and childhood.