Pancreatitis of Mice Infected with Encephalomyocarditis Virus

Abstract

Morphologic changes in the pancreas of mice infected with encephalomyocarditis virus were studied to learn of the pathogenesis of viral pancreatitis. Viral crystals with associated cell injury including necrosis were noted in both acinar and islet cells of the pancreas of newborn and adult mice. Pathologic changes included scattered individual or focal cell necrosis of varying degrees of damage of both the acinar and islet cells. Mild to extensive inflammatory cell infiltration and edema were noted. It is suggested that the virus directly invaded the cells of parenchymatous tissue of the pancreas. A possible relationship between the damage noted and diabetes mellitus is discussed.

Viral antibody studies in pancreatic disease.

“…Pancreatitis has been reported in Coxsackie B infection (Kibrick and Benirschke, 1958;Fechner et al, 1963;Murphy and Simmul, 1964;Ursing, 1973), and in one epidemiological study serum amylase levels were elevated in 31 % of patients during an outbreak of Coxsackie B5 infection (Nakao et al, 1964). Pancreatic damage can be produced in animals by several viruses, including infectious pancreatic necrosis virus in trout (Wood et al, 1955), and Coxsackie B (Pappenheimer et al, 1951;Minkowitz and Berkovich, 1970;Burch et al, 1971;Harrison et al, 1972;Tsui et al, 1972;Ross et al, 1974), encephalomyocarditis (Craighead, 1965;Burch et al, 1974), foot and mouth disease (Platt, Received for publication 18 September 1975. 866 1956), and mouse hepatitis (Hirano and Ruebner, 1968) viruses, in mice.…”

Pathogenicity of Mengo Virus to Mice

“…virus [J ungeblut, 1958], EMC virus [Jungeblut, 1958;C raighead and Mc Lane, 1968;F riedman and M aenza, 1968; Burch et al, 1971Burch et al, ,1973 and MM virus [Gadeke, 1952;G adeke and Betke, 1952;Potel and Becker, 1959], systematic and de tailed histological investigations on Mengo virus infection are apparently lacking. Studies performed in this laboratory, in order to define the properties of a serially mouse brain-passaged strain of Mengo virus [Veckenstedt, in press], have included also histopathological examina tion of intraperitoneally (i.p.)…”