EXPERIMENTAL CHRONIC RABIES IN THE CAT

  • 1 January 1980
    • journal article
    • research article
    • Vol. 43  (3) , 231-241
Abstract
Two cats inoculated with a street rabies virus strain survived with only some progressive debility and atrophy of musculature in the injected limb for 136 wk. They had continuously increasing titers of neutralizing antibody in serum and CSF, and terminally they had high antibody titers in the brain. Virus was isolated from 2 brain specimens of 1 cat obtained at necropsy; isolation was successful only by explant culture and inoculation of explanted tissue into mice. Virus antigen was detected in 8 sites in the brain and spinal cord of the same cat by frozen-section immunofluorescence. CNS lesions consisted of neuronal degeneration and neuronophagia, associated with the presence of inclusion bodies and widespread inflammatory cell infiltration into brain and spinal cord parenchyma, perineuronal sites and perivascular spaces. The infiltrates contained lymphocytes, monocytes-macrophages and a high proportion of plasma cells. These experimental cases of chronic progressive rabies resembled more closely subacute sclerosing panencephalitis of man than the usual subacute fatal rabies encephalitis of man and other mammal sp.