Abstract
Summary
In vitro tests of the susceptibility of 30 normal human fibroblast lines to infection by herpes hominis, adenovirus-7, echovirus-11 and measles viruses have shown significant variations in individual host susceptibility to infection by one or more of these agents. Resistance of an individual cell line to a given virus appears to be specific for that virus, and is not necessarily associated with resistance of the same cells to other viruses.
Family studies utilizing fibroblasts obtained from parents and from siblings geno-typed for the HL-A system and other biological markers suggest that, if susceptibility to viral infection in man is determined by a host cell genome, this type of genetic control may be of a multigenic nature. No pattern of dominant inheritance has been observed in the limited studies reported here. The results suggest, however, the possibility that the host's HL-A genotype or genes closely linked to the HL-A chromosomal region may play a role in conditioning resistance to viral infectin.
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