Abstract
Summary
Fresh isolates of trachoma-inclusion conjunctivitis (TRIC) agents infect the human eye, but undergo only very limited, if any, replication in cell culture. In the course of laboratory passage, variants arise which proliferate freely in cell culture. The ability of such cell culture-adapted variants to infect the human eye was investigated. Of 20 volunteers infected with 2 such variants, only one developed clinical eye disease. In 16 others, limited replication of the agent was proven by immunofluorescent staining of conjunctival scrapings, with the largest amount of TRIC antigen present during the second week after infection. The cell culture-adapted strains LB-1 and BOUR-J appeared to be 100-1000 times less infective for the human conjunctiva than fresh TRIC isolates. The limitations of such variant strains as potential live vaccines are considered.
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