Abstract
Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) is a progressive degenerative, neurologic disease of children that begins with mental and motor deterioration. After an interval of weeks or months, a state of plastic rigidity, interrupted by myoclonic jerks, intervenes. Coma, with signs of decortication and often of hypothalamic dysfunction, occurs during the terminal stage of this fatal illness.
Observation of cytoplasmic and nuclear inclusion bodies in cortical neurons of patients with SSPE led Dawson to propose a viral etiology for this disease (1). Evidence for an association between SSPE and measles virus has been reviewed and includes: a history of measles infection prior to the onset of symptoms; demonstration by electron microscopy of structures in the diseased brain that are morphologically similar to the nucleocapsids of paramyxoviruses; detection of measles, or a related antigen by immunofluorescence in the brain of patients with SSPE; and presence of exceptionally high levels of antibody against measles virus in both the serum and cerebrospinal fluid of these patients (2). Nevertheless, there has been a recurring failure to isolate or transmit an infectious agent in animals or tissue cultures inoculated with material from SSPE patients.
The present report describes the occurrence of measles antigen and syncytia formation in cells propagated in vitro from the brain of a patient with SSPE, and the production of syncytia in several kinds of cultured cells when exposed to these brain cells.
Materials and Methods. Tissue specimen. Open biopsy was performed by Dr. F. C. Kriss of the Department of Neurosurgery on a patient whose diagnosis of SSPE was based upon clinical and serologic evidence. Bits of cortex in Hanks' balanced salt solution (BSS) containing antibiotics were received in each author's laboratory within 20 min from the time of biopsy.
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