A naturally occurring epizootic of dermatitis involved all the mice, provisionally designated as DS-Nh, housed under conventional conditions, regardless of age or sex. The disease primarily attacked the lateral aspect of the face, neck and shoulders. The histopathologic features of the dermatitis varied in severity, but all affected regions showed signs of chronic dermatitis, including infiltration of inflammatory cells, parakeratosis and amyloidosis, and contained Gram-positive cocci clusters. Bacteriologically, coagulase-positive Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) was recovered in pure culture from the skin lesions. The disease experimentally induced with the S. aureus isolates was indistinguishable from those observed in naturally occurring cases. The results suggested that S. aureus may be casually associated with the disease.

Gangliosides were shown to bear the tumor‐associated N‐glycolylneuraminic acid (NeuGc)‐specific Hanganutziu‐Deicher (HD) antigen expressed in human retinoblastoma cells. HD antigenie gangliosides were detected by thin‐layer chromatography/enzyme‐immunostaining using affinity‐purified chicken antibody against GM3 containing NeuGc and horseradish peroxidase‐conjugated anti‐chicken IgG. One to four species of the antigenic gangliosides were detected from all of 4 cell lines, Y79, WERI‐Rb1, TOTL1, and YK, as well as freshly cultured retinoblastoma cells and isolated tumor tissue. All cases contained GMS(NeuGc) as an HD antigen. No HD antigenic ganglioside was detected in normal retinal tissues by the same procedure.

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A causative agent, provisionally designated as CARS, was isolated from the enlarged submaxillary gland of rat which was characterized as a sialoadenitis, using mouse-derived Balb/c3T3 clone A31 (3T3) cell culture. The virus could be propagated in 3T3 cell culture where it produced multinucleated giant cells and formed clear plaques. It was identified as a member of the coronavirus group from the following results: RNA content was suggested by the lack of the effect of cytosine arabinoside, the infectivity was sensitive to lipid solvents and inactivated at 56 degrees C for 5 minutes, the viral particle showed typical coronavirus morphology which was approximately 100 nm in diameter. Serologically, although CARS and sialodacryoadenitis virus (SDAV) actually belonged to the rat-coronavirus group, some antigenic variations existed between these two agents in the results of both neutralization and complement-fixation tests using monovalent antisera. When inoculated intranasally into susceptible rats, CARS caused clinically and histologically overt sialoadenitis as observed in the natural outbreak, and retained its virulence for rats in several passages of mouse brain and even when cell culture was used, while rats which were inoculated with SDAV were asymptomatic.