TY - JOUR
T1 - Large Amounts of Reactivated Virus in Tears Precedes Recurrent Herpes Stromal Keratitis in Stressed Rabbits Latently Infected with Herpes Simplex Virus
AU - Perng, Guey Chuen
AU - Osorio, Nelson
AU - Jiang, Xianzhi
AU - Geertsema, Roger
AU - Hsiang, Chinhui
AU - Brown, Don
AU - Benmohamed, Lbachir
AU - Wechsler, Steven L.
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Dr. Nigel Fraser for reading this manuscript and providing helpful comments. DECLARATION OF INTEREST The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.This study was supported by Public Health Service NIH grants 1R56AI098985, 1R56AI093133, R01EY013191, RO1EY019896, RO1EY14900 and EY024618, and The Discovery Center for Eye Research. None of the authors have a commercial relationship in the form of financial support or personal financial interest with any company.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.
PY - 2016/3/3
Y1 - 2016/3/3
N2 - Aim: Recurrent herpetic stromal keratitis (rHSK), due to an immune response to reactivation of herpes simplex virus (HSV-1), can cause corneal blindness. The development of therapeutic interventions such as drugs and vaccines to decrease rHSK have been hampered by the lack of a small and reliable animal model in which rHSK occurs at a high frequency during HSV-1 latency. The aim of this study is to develop a rabbit model of rHSK in which stress from elevated temperatures increases the frequency of HSV-1 reactivations and rHSK.Materials and methods: Rabbits latently infected with HSV-1 were subjected to elevated temperatures and the frequency of viral reactivations and rHSK were determined.Results: In an experiment in which rabbits latently infected with HSV-1 were subjected to ill-defined stress as a result of failure of the vivarium air conditioning system, reactivation of HSV-1 occurred at over twice the normal frequency. In addition, 60% of eyes developed severe rHSK compared to <1% of eyes normally. All episodes of rHSK were preceded four to five days prior by an unusually large amount of reactivated virus in the tears of that eye and whenever this unusually large amount of reactivated virus was detected in tears, rHSK always appeared 4-5 days later. In subsequent experiments using well defined heat stress the reactivation frequency was similarly increased, but no eyes developed rHSK.Conclusions: The results reported here support the hypothesis that rHSK is associated not simply with elevated reactivation frequency, but rather with rare episodes of very high levels of reactivated virus in tears 4-5 days earlier.
AB - Aim: Recurrent herpetic stromal keratitis (rHSK), due to an immune response to reactivation of herpes simplex virus (HSV-1), can cause corneal blindness. The development of therapeutic interventions such as drugs and vaccines to decrease rHSK have been hampered by the lack of a small and reliable animal model in which rHSK occurs at a high frequency during HSV-1 latency. The aim of this study is to develop a rabbit model of rHSK in which stress from elevated temperatures increases the frequency of HSV-1 reactivations and rHSK.Materials and methods: Rabbits latently infected with HSV-1 were subjected to elevated temperatures and the frequency of viral reactivations and rHSK were determined.Results: In an experiment in which rabbits latently infected with HSV-1 were subjected to ill-defined stress as a result of failure of the vivarium air conditioning system, reactivation of HSV-1 occurred at over twice the normal frequency. In addition, 60% of eyes developed severe rHSK compared to <1% of eyes normally. All episodes of rHSK were preceded four to five days prior by an unusually large amount of reactivated virus in the tears of that eye and whenever this unusually large amount of reactivated virus was detected in tears, rHSK always appeared 4-5 days later. In subsequent experiments using well defined heat stress the reactivation frequency was similarly increased, but no eyes developed rHSK.Conclusions: The results reported here support the hypothesis that rHSK is associated not simply with elevated reactivation frequency, but rather with rare episodes of very high levels of reactivated virus in tears 4-5 days earlier.
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U2 - 10.3109/02713683.2015.1020172
DO - 10.3109/02713683.2015.1020172
M3 - Article
C2 - 25859798
AN - SCOPUS:84960345769
VL - 41
SP - 284
EP - 291
JO - Current Eye Research
JF - Current Eye Research
SN - 0271-3683
IS - 3
ER -