In vitro studies on the enhancement of Rauscher virus-induced erythroblastosis by complete Freund's adjuvant in BALB/c mice.

Inoculation of complete Freund's adjuvant (CFA) into BALB/c mice either before or after infection with Rauscher murine leukemia virus (MuLV-R) led to an acceleration of the disease as determined by spleen weight. Treatment with CFA also induced a higher number of spleen erythroblast foci and, in the bone marrow, erythropoietin-independent cells that produced erythroid colonies in vitro. CFA induced in the bone marrow not only an increase in myeloid progenitor cells that can produce colonies in agar, but an ever larger increase in the number of erythroid colony-forming cells. Virus-induced erythroblastosis was probably enhanced by CFA due to the production of many target cells. The more primitive burst-forming cell, which produced large colonies of erythroid cells after 10 days in culture, was also physiologically transformed in MuLV-R-infected mice; bursts could be formed by cells of such animals in the absence of erythropoietin.