Abstract
To date specific chemotherapy has not been successfully employed for the treatment of disease caused by viruses other than the Chlamydozoaceae and Eaton agent. Vigorous research by Tamm, Horsfall, and others has yielded some agents which appear to inhibit virus growth(1) when applied at time of infection, but these effects have not been dramatic and have not been found to cure established viral lesions. Even with interferon, the reversal of established disease, to our knowledge, has not been demonstrated in any in vivo or in vitro situation.
This paper will report the prompt cure of well established lesions of rabbit cornea produced by herpes simplex keratitis even when treatment is delayed for several days after infection.
Methods. Treatment was administered with 5-iodo-2'-deoxyuridine (IDU)†(2). A saturated solution of IDU at pH 7.4 was prepared in distilled water at 56 degrees Centigrade and then refrigerated. The drug was administered as eye drops, one drop in each eye every 2 hours for 48 hours. In some cases treatment was continued every 2 hours from 8 a. m. to 4 p. m. after the first 2 days, but not in most experiments.
Herpes simplex virus of the Virtue strain with a titer of 10-9 in rabbit kidney tissue culture was used for the inoculum (3). The virus had been isolated from a patient with herpetic keratitis and passed 6 times in rabbit kidney tissue culture. The inoculum, which was briefly stored at dry ice temperature, was in a medium 50% of which was Hanks' balanced salt solution containing 2% calf serum, and 50% of which was skim milk. Inoculation of the rabbit eyes was as previously described (3).
The infection rate was 100% and the initial selection of animals for treatment was made on a random basis at the time of infection.
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