Abstract
Brain and spinal cord from 2 cases of SSPE were obtained within one hour of death and cultures were established from multiple sites including frontal, temporal and parietal lobes, pons, cerebellum and cord. These were serially passaged and remained viable for many months. Their growth rates, cytologic detail, and survival varied depending on the region of brain sampled. Only certain of these cultures, derived from specific neuroanatomical sites showed evidence of measles antigen or yielded a viral agent when appropriately studied.
Cell cultures derived from cortical regions showed intranuclear and intracytoplasmic inclusion bodies even before a monolayer had formed. These inclusions were both type A and B, and in one case the cells showed significant hemadsorption in a distribution indicating the presence of viral antigen in terminal processes.
Two cell types could be identified in early cultures from the cortex but with passage, one of these, a small round cell with a hyperchromatic nucleus, disappeared and the other, a larger cell, seemed to elongate and divide rapidly, resulting in the fibroblastic monolayer. The cells derived from the cerebellum and spinal cord were slower to grow, had a shorter survival and different morphology.
Despite widespread pathologic changes in both brains, cytopathology developed only in the cultures of the frontal lobe in the first case and to date, after 3 months, this is the only region showing similar changes in studies of the second patient. An agent, immunologically identified as measles virus has been isolated from one of these specimens. This study underscores the importance of post mortem cultivation of neural tissue in all patients with chronic CNS disease.
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Griffith, J., Katz, S. In vitro studies of post mortem neural tissue in subacute selerosing panecephalitis (SSPE). Pediatr Res 5, 373–374 (1971). https://doi.org/10.1203/00006450-197108000-00012
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1203/00006450-197108000-00012