Effect of Anti-Interferon Serum on Friend Virus Infection andFv-1-Mediated Resistance

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Abstract
The purpose of these studies was (1) the quantitation of the protective effect of endogenous interferon (IFN) in the Friend virus (FV) system, and (2) the determination of the role of IFN in the relative resistance to FV mediated by the Fv-1 gene. In these studies, mice from two strains differing with respect to their Fv-1 alleles were treated with sheep anti-mouse IFN serum immediately prior to infection with N-tropic FV. The effect of this pretreatment showed that the neutralization of FV-induced IFN by anti-IFN resulted in a two to tenfold increase in susceptibility to FV infection as measured by the appearance of macroscopic foci of erythroleukemic cells on the splenic surface as compared to control mice which received normal sheep serum. At higher virus doses, an increase in spleen weight in anti-IFN-treated mice was also observed. Mice resistant to FV by virtue of their Fv-1 allele were affected by anti-IFN pretreatment only as much as mice from the susceptible strain. Therefore, IFN appeared to play no role in Fv-1-mediated resistance.