The Use of a Photodensitometric Technique to Evaluate the Efficacy of Antiviral Compounds against Swine Influenza (Influenza A/New Jersey) Infection in Mice.

摘要

During studies of swine influenza virus (A/New Jersey) infection a technique was devised to quantify the pulmonary lesions in mice treated at different time intervals with antiviral chemotherapeutic agents. The technique is based on the premise that as the severity of microscopic change increases, the optical density of lung sections also increases due to edema and to an increase in cell numbers in infected lungs. Seven days after intranasal instillation of the virus, mice were killed and the lungs were perfused with 2% glutaraldehyde at constant pressure. The optical density of lungs of mice pretreated with amantadine, rimantadine, or ribavirin was significantly reduced compared with infected-untreated controls (P less than 0.01). If treatment was delayed until 15 h after infection, amantadine and ribavirin were effective in reducing pulmonary optical density but rimantadine was without effect.